“But life’s so full of anti-climax,” she concluded. Siegmund smiled softly at her. She had him too much in love to disagree or to examine her words.
“There’s no reckoning with life, and no reckoning with the sea. The only way to get on with both is to be as near a vacuum as possible, and float,” he jested. It hurt her that he was flippant. She proceeded to forget he had spoken.
There were three children on the beach. Helena had handed him back the senseless bauble, not able to throw it away. Being a father:
“I will give it to the children,” he said.
She looked up at him, loved him for the thought.
Wandering hand in hand, for it pleased them both to own each other publicly, after years of conventional distance, they came to a little girl who was bending over a pool. Her black hair hung in long snakes to the water. She stood up, flung back her locks to see them as they approached. In one hand she clasped some pebbles.
“Would you like this? I found it down there,” said Siegmund offering her the bulb.
She looked at him with grave blue eyes and accepted his gift. Evidently she was not going to say anything.
“The sea brought it all the way from the mainland without breaking it,” said Helena, with the interesting intonation some folk use to children.
The girl looked at her.
“The waves put it out of their lap on to some seaweed with such careful fingers——”
The child’s eyes brightened.
“The tide-line is full of treasures,” said Helena, smiling.
The child answered her smile a little.
