stealthily.
The shore was closer now but the distance between the two swimmers had also diminished appreciably. Marianne was beginning to tire. Her movements were growing sluggish and her heart was thumping painfully in her breast. She knew that she was nearly at the end of her strength and that she had no choice now but to sink or let him overtake her.
Suddenly, she saw, directly in front of her, a minute crescent-shaped opening, paler than the surrounding rocks. Summoning up her last, remaining strength, she forced her limbs into one last effort but the man was gaining on her. He was close behind her now, a great black shadow with no distinguishing features. Terror stopped her breath and, at the very instant two hands reached out towards her, Marianne went under.
She returned to consciousness and to an awareness of strange sensations. She was lying on the sand in inky darkness and a man was holding her in his arms. He, too, was naked for she could feel the texture of his skin next to hers, smooth and warm but strongly muscled. She could see nothing at all, except perhaps a thickening of the darkness before her face, and when she stretched out her arms, instinctively, they touched rock to the side and above her. She was in some kind of low, narrow cave in the rocks. She tried to cry out, seized with a sudden terror at finding herself immured in this crevice in the rocks. A firm and burning mouth stifled her cries. She tried to struggle but the arms tightened round her, holding her still as the unknown man began to caress her.
Sure of himself, he made no attempt to hurry. His hands were gentle but subtly experienced and she knew that he was seeking to rouse her to the pitch where love becomes an irresistible fever. She tried to set her teeth and stiffen her muscles but the man had an extraordinary knowledge of the female body. Her fears had evaporated long ago, and now Marianne could feel long, shuddering waves of pleasure stealing up through her body. Still the kiss went on, that, too, strangely skilled, and Marianne found her breath sucked from her and her spirit weakening… It was so strange, this making love with a shadow. Little by little, she felt the weight of a tall body, full of strength and life, and yet it seemed to her that in some curious way she was making love with a ghost. Witches in the olden days who claimed to have had intercourse with the devil must have felt like this. She might have thought that it was nothing but a dream if that other flesh had not felt so warm and solid and but for the faint yet altogether earthly smell of mint which clung about the person of her unknown lover. Moreover, he was gradually attaining his ends. Possessed by the most primitive desires, Marianne was moaning now in his arms. The insistent waves of pleasure were mounting within her, higher and higher, overwhelming her… When, at last, the man allowed his long control to break, she burst like a red sun.
Two voices cried out together. That, and the chaotic beating of his heart was all that Marianne heard of her invisible lover. The next instant, he had risen, gasping, and was gone.
She heard the pebbles shifting under his running feet and raised herself quickly on her elbow, in time to see a tall figure dive into the sea. There was a tremendous splash, then nothing more. The man had not uttered a single word.
When Marianne crept out of the hollow in the rocks which the stranger had chosen to shelter them, she felt light-headed but physically curiously calm. It astonished her that she should feel so happy. She felt no shame or guilt for what had happened, perhaps just because the man had vanished so swiftly after making love to her, and had vanished so completely. No trace of his presence remained. He had simply melted into the night and into the sea whence he had come, as the morning mist is dissipated in the first rays of the sun. Who he was and where he came from, Marianne would probably never know. He was most likely a Greek fisherman, as she had first thought. She had seen many since landing on the island, beautiful and untamed as clouds in the sky, and still carrying about them a little of the aura of the old gods of Olympus who had been skilled at catching mortals unawares. He must have seen her go down to the beach and enter the water and it had been instinctive for him to follow her. The rest had been inevitable.
Perhaps it was Jupiter… or Neptune? she thought, amused in a way that astonished even herself. In the ordinary way, she would undoubtedly have felt outraged, baffled and indignant, and heaven knew what else, yet she felt none of these things. More than that, she was honest enough to admit to herself that those fleeting moments of passion had been not disagreeable and would linger rather pleasantly in her memory. She would be able to look back on it all simply as an adventure, a distinctly nice adventure!
The little inlet was not nearly so far from the beach as she had feared. She had been so frightened before that she had not been properly conscious of the direction. The moon, which was now rising beyond the point, sent a thin sliver of silver over the water, and it was suddenly much lighter, although just as hot.
Hoping that this time no one would see her, Marianne slid back into the water and swam to the beach, pausing when her toes touched the sandy bottom to take a cautious look up and down. Then she hurried out of the water and put on her clothes as fast as she could manage, without bothering to dry herself, only wringing the water out of her hair. Carrying her shoes to keep them from getting full of sand, she made her way up the beach to the dense shadow of the trees.
She was just stepping into it when she was frozen where she stood by the sound of a laugh. It was a man's laugh but this time Marianne was not in the least afraid. Anger and exasperation were uppermost. She was growing a little tired of this night's surprises. Besides whoever had laughed was probably the same… She felt her temper rising. She had been inclined to find her adventure rather charming, yet if he could laugh…
'Come out!' she cried. 'And stop laughing.'
'Good was it – your bathe?' came a mocking voice in execrably uncertain Italian. 'Good to watch, yes. Beautiful lady!'
As he spoke, the man emerged from under the trees and came towards Marianne. The flowing white robes he wore gave him a faintly ghostly appearance and the turban wound round his head made him seem to her to be very tall. She did not stop to think that this turbaned figure might belong to a henchman of the terrible Ali against whom she had been warned. She only thought that the man's words and his laughter had been an insult. Instantly, she darted forward and dealt him a ringing box on the ears, almost before she could see him.
'You ill-mannered lout!' she abused him. 'You were spying on me! How dare you!'
The slap had one good thing about it, in so far as it told her that this Turk or Epirote or whatever else he might be was not her erstwhile ravisher. Her hand had encountered a bearded cheek, whereas the other's face had been smooth. But far from resenting her attack, the stranger had begun to laugh.
'Why you angry? I have done wrong? I walk here every night – see no one. Sea, shore and sky, nothing else. Tonight I see a gown on the sand and someone who swims. I wait.'
Marianne was regretting the slap. He was only someone out for a late stroll, after all. Probably, his house was nearby. He had not been guilty of anything so very dreadful.
'I beg your pardon,' she said. 'I thought it was something else. I did wrong to hit you.' Then, as a new idea came to her, she added: 'But since you were on the beach, did you see anyone come out of the water before me?'
'Here? No, no one. A few minutes ago… was someone swimming – out there, by the point. That's all.'
'Oh. Thank you.'
Evidently her elusive lover must have been Neptune. Seeing that the man had nothing more to tell her, she prepared to go on her way. She supported herself with one hand against the trunk of a cypress while she put on her shoes, but the stranger, it seemed, did not intend to leave matters there. He came closer.
'You not angry now?' he said, and again there was that laugh which Marianne was beginning to think sounded a little simple. 'We… friends?'
He had both hands on her shoulders, trying to pull her towards him. It was a bad move, for Marianne, furious, pushed him away so fiercely that he was caught off balance and fell headlong on the sand.
'You—'
There was no time to search for a suitable adjective. The shot had been fired at the precise moment Marianne pushed the man away and the ball passed between them. She felt the wind of its passing and instinctively flung herself to the ground. A second shot followed almost at once. Someone was firing at them from beneath the trees.
The man in the turban wriggled towards her.
'Not move… not be afraid… shoot at me,' he whispered.
'You mean someone is trying to kill you? But whatever for?'
'Ssh!'
He was slipping dexterously out of his flowing white garment. Next he took off his turban and hung it on a
