chose the hot sand, where no shade was, on which to lie.
“Shall we not go under the rocks?” said Helena.
“Look!” he said, “the sun is beating on the cliffs. It is hotter, more suffocating, there.”
So they lay down in the glare, Helena watching the foam retreat slowly with a cool splash; Siegmund thinking. The naked body of heat was dreadful.
“My arms, Siegmund,” said she. “They feel as if they were dipped in fire.”
Siegmund took them, without a word, and hid them under his coat.
“Are you sure it is not bad for you—your head, Siegmund? Are you sure?”
He laughed stupidly.
“That is all right,” he said. He knew that the sun was burning through him, and doing him harm, but he wanted the intoxicaton.
As he looked wistfully far away over the sea at Helena’s mist-curtain, he said:
“I think we should be able to keep together if”—he faltered—“if only I could have you a little longer. I have never had you…”
Some sound of failure, some tone telling her it was too late, some ring of despair in his quietness, made Helena cling to him wildly, with a savage little cry as if she were wounded. She clung to him, almost beside herself. She could not lose him, she could not spare him. She would not let him go. Helena was, for the moment, frantic.
He held her safely, saying nothing until she was calmer, when, with his lips on her cheek, he murmured:
