The man on the brink drew a short, hard breath, and put his hand to his eyes as if dazed.  And from beyond the Spear Point there sounded the deep tolling of the bell-buoy as it rocked on the rising tide.

CHAPTER VII

THE DEATH CURRENT

The pool was still again, still as a sheet of glass, reflecting the midnight glory of the moon.  It was climbing high in the sky, and the cloud-wreaths were mounting towards it as incense smoke from an altar.  The thick, black curtain that hung in the west was growing like a monstrous shadow, threatening to overspread the whole earth.

Down on the silver beach, crouched on one of the rocks that bordered the shining pool, Knight worked with fevered intensity to catch the magic of the hour.  The light was wonderful.  The pool shone strangely, deeply green; the rocks about it might have been delicately carved in ivory.  And across the pool, clear-cut against the utter darkness of the Spear Point Rock, stood Aphrodite the Beautiful, clad in some green translucent draperies, her black hair loose about her, her white arms outstretched to the moonlight, her face—­exquisite as a flower—­upturned to meet the glory.  She was like a dream too wonderful to be true, save for the passion that lived in her eyes.  That was vivid, that was poignant—­the fire of sacrifice burning inwardly.

The man worked on as one driven by a ruthless force.  His teeth were clenched upon his lower lip.  His hands were shaking, and yet he knew that what he did was too superb for criticism.  It was the work of genius—­the driving force within that would not let him pause to listen to the wild urgings of his heart.  That might come after.  But this—­this power that compelled was supreme.  While it gripped him he was not his own master.  He was, as he himself had said, a slave.

And while he worked at its behest, watching the wonderful thing that inspiration was weaving by his hand, scarcely conscious of effort, though the perspiration was streaming down his face, he whispered over and over between his clenched teeth the title of the picture that was to astonish the world—­“The Goddess Veiled in Foam.”

There was no foam as yet on the pool, but he remembered how two nights before he had seen the breaking of the first wave that had turned it into a seething cauldron of surf.  That was what he wanted now—­just the first great wave washing over her exquisite feet and flinging its garment of spray like a flimsy veil over her perfect form.  He wanted that as he wanted nothing else on earth.  And then—­then—­he would catch his dream, he would chain for ever the fairy vision that might never be granted again.

There came a boom like a distant gunshot on the other side of the Spear Point Rock, and again, but very far away, there sounded the tolling of the bell beyond the reef.  The man’s heart gave a great leap.  It was coming!