Page:Silver Shoal Light.djvu/73

Rh Joan half shut her eyes.

"I see what you mean," she said. Then she smiled. Sand-strewn caverns cool and deep, where the winds are all asleep, she quoted, half to herself; where the spent lights quiver and gleam, where the salt weed sways in the stream.

"That's nice," said Garth; "go on."

"I don't think you'd understand the whole of it," Joan said.

"I like things I don't understand," said Garth. "Please say it."

So, more to please herself than anything else, Joan repeated "The Forsaken Merman" rather dramatically, for though she did not believe in mermaids, she believed sincerely in Matthew Arnold. When she had finished, Garth rubbed his eyes furtively.

"I do understand it," he said; "but I think she was horrid. The poor merbabies, sitting on the cold tombstones and looking in at her through the window! You wouldn't have done that, if you'd married a merman, would you, Joan?"

"I shouldn't have married the merman, to begin with," she said. "Garth! How