"I heard singing," he said dreamily, "and I climbed a tree and saw--you!
Do you blame me for trying to corroborate a thing like _you?_"
"You thought I was a _real_ one?"
"I thought that I thought I saw a real one."
She looked at him hopefully.
"Tell me, _did_ my singing compel you to swim out here?"
"I don't know what compelled me."
"But--you _were_ compelled?"
"I--it seems so----"
"O-h!" Flushed, excited, laughing, she clasped her hands under her chin
and gazed at him.
"To think," she said softly, "that you believed me to be a real siren,
and that my beauty and my singing actually did lure you to my rock! Isn't
it exciting?"
He looked at her, then turned red:
"Yes, it is," he said.
Hands still clasped together tightly beneath her rounded chin, she
surveyed him with intense interest. He was at a disadvantage; the sleek,
half-drowned appearance which a man has who emerges from a swim does not
exhibit him at his best.
But he had a deeper interest for Flavilla; her melody and loveliness had
actually lured him across the water to the peril of her rocks; this human
being, this man creature, seemed to be, in a sense, hers.
"Please fix your hair," she said, handing him her comb and mirror.
"My hair?"
"Certainly. I want to look at you."
He thought her request rather extraordinary, but he sat up and with the
aid of the mirror, scraped away at his wet hair, parting it in the middle
and combing it deftly into two gay little Mercury wings.
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