Up from the darkness of the companionway the niece came, naked and silent as a ghost. She stood for a space, but there was no sound from anywhere, and she crossed the deck and stopped again at the rail, breathing the soft chill mist into her lungs, feeling the mist swaddling her firm simple body with a faint lingering chillness. Her legs and arms were so tan that naked she appeared to wear a bathing suit of a startling white. She climbed the rail. The tender rocked a little under her, causing the black motionless water to come alive, making faint sounds. Then she slid over the stern and swam out into the mist.

The water divided with oily reluctance, closing again behind her with scarce a ripple. Here, at the water level, she could see nothing save a grayness and flaccid disturbed tongues of water lapping into it, leaving small fleeting gaps between mist and water before the mist filled them again silently as settling wings. The hull of the yacht was a vague thing, a thing felt, known, rather than seen. She swam slowly, circling the place where she knew it should be.

She swam slowly and steadily, trying to keep her approximate distance from the yacht by instinct. But, consciously this was hard to do; consciously in this vague restricted immensity, this limitless vagueness whose center was herself, the yacht could be in any direction from her. She paused and trod water while little tongues of water kissed her face, lapping against her lips. It’s on my right, she told herself. It’s on my right, over there. Not fear: merely a faint unease, an exasperation; but to reassure herself she swam a few strokes in that direction. The mist neither thickened nor thinned.

She trod water again and water licked at her face soundlessly. Damn your fool soul, she whispered, and at that moment a round huge thing like a dead lidless eye watched her suddenly from the mist and there came a faint sound from somewhere in the mist above her head. In two strokes she touched the hull of the yacht: a vindication, and she knew a faint pride and a touch of relief as she swam along the hull and circled the stern. She grasped the gunwale of the tender and hung there for a while, getting her wind back.

That faint sound came again from the deck; a movement, and she spoke into the mist: “David?” The mist took the word, sweeping it lightly against the hull, then it rebounded again and the mist absorbed it. But he had heard and he appeared vaguely above her at the rail, looking down at her where she hung in the water. “Go away, so I can get out,” she said. He didn’t move, and she added: “I haven’t got on a bathing suit. Go away a minute, David.”

But he didn’t move. He leaned over the rail, looking at her with a dumb and utter longing and after a while she slid quickly and easily into the tender, and still he remained motionless, making no move to help her as her grave simple body came swiftly aboard the yacht. “Be back in a minute,” she said over her shoulder and her startling white bathing suit sped across the deck and out of the ken of his dog’s eyes. The mist without thinning was filling with light: an imminence of dawn like a glory, a splendor of trumpets unheard.

Her minute was three minutes. She reappeared in her little colored linen dress, her dark coarse hair still damp, carrying her shoes and stockings in her hand. He hadn’t moved at all.

“Well, let’s get going,” she said. She looked at him impatiently. “Aren’t you ready yet?” He stirred at last, watching her with the passive abjectness of a dog. “Come on,” she said sharply. “Haven’t you got the stuff for breakfast yet? What’s the matter with you, David? Snap out of your trance.” She examined him again, with a sober impersonality. “You didn’t believe I was going to do it—is that it? Or are you backing out yourself? Come on, say so now, if you want to call it off.” She came nearer, examining his face with her grave opaque eyes. She extended her hand. “David?”

He took her hand slowly, looking at her, and she grasped his hand and shook his arm sharply. “Wake up. Say, you haven’t— Come on, let’s get some stuff for breakfast, and beat it. We haven’t got all day.”

He followed her and in the galley she switched on the light and chose a flat box of bacon and a loaf of bread, putting them on a table and delving again among boxes and lockers and shelves. “Have you got matches? a knife?” she asked over her shoulder. “And—where are oranges? Let’s take some oranges. I love oranges, don’t you?” She turned her head to look at him. His hand was just touching her sleeve, so diffidently that she had not felt it. She turned suddenly, putting the oranges down, and put her arms about him, hard and firm and sexless, drawing his cheek down to her sober moist kiss. She could feel his hammering erratic heart against her breast, could hear it surging in the silence almost as though it were in her own body. His arms tightened and he moved his head, seeking her mouth, but she evaded him with a quick movement, without reproof.

“No, no, not that. Everybody does that.” She strained him against her hard body again, then released him. “Come on, now. Have you got everything?” She examined the shelves again, finding at last a small basket. It was filled with damp lettuce but she dumped the lettuce out and put her things in it. “You take my shoes. They’ll go in your pocket, won’t they?” She crumpled her limp blonde stockings into her slippers and gave them to him. Then she picked up the basket and snapped off the light.

Day was a nearer thing yet, though it was not quite come. Though the mist had not thinned, the yacht was visible from stem to stern, asleep like a gull with folded wings; and against the hull the water sighed a long awakening sigh. The shoreline was darker, a more palpable vagueness in the mist.

“Say,” she remarked, stopping suddenly, “how are we going to get ashore? I forgot that. We don’t want to take the tender.”

“Swim,” he suggested. Her dark damp head came just to his chin and she mused for a time in a sober consternation.

“Isn’t there some way we can go in the tender and then pull it back to the yacht with a rope?”

“I . . . Yes. Yes, we can do that.”

“Well, you get a rope then. Snap into it.”

When he returned with a coiled line she was already in the tender with the oars, and she watched with interest while he passed the rope around a stanchion and brought both ends into the boat with him and made one of the ends fast to the ringbolt in the stem of the skiff. Then she caught the idea and she sat and paid out the line while he pulled away for shore. Soon they beached and she sprang ashore, still holding the free end of the rope. “How’re we going to keep the tender from pulling the rope back around that post and getting aloose?” she asked.

“I’ll show you,” he answered, and she watched him while he tied the oars and the rowlocks together with the free end of the line and wedged them beneath the thwarts. “That’ll hold, I guess. Somebody’ll be sure to see her pretty soon,” he added, and prepared to draw the skiff back to the yacht.

“Wait a minute,” she said. She mused gravely, gazing at the dim shadowy yacht, then she borrowed matches from him, and sitting on the gunwale of the tender she tore a strip of paper from the bacon box and with a charred match printed Going to— She looked up. “Where are we going?” He looked at her and she added quickly: “I mean, what town? We’ll have to go to a town somewhere, you know, to get back to New Orleans so I can get some clothes and my seventeen dollars. What’s the name of a town?”

After a while he said: “I don’t know. I never—”

“That’s right, you never were over here before, either, were you? Well, what’s that town the ferries go to? the one Jenny’s always talking about you have fun at?” She stared again at the vague shape of the Nausikaa, then she suddenly printed Mandeville. “That’s the name of it—Mandeville. Which way is Mandeville from here?” He didn’t know, and she added: “No matter, we’ll find it, I guess.” She signed the note and laid it on the sternseat, weighting it with a small rock. “Now, pull her off,” she commanded, and soon there came back to them across the motionless water a faint thud.

“Good-by, Nausikaa,” she said. “Wait,” she added, “I better put my shoes on, I guess.” He gave her her slippers and she sat flat on the narrow beach and put them on, returning the crumpled stockings to him. “Wait,” she said again, taking the stockings again and flipping them out. She slid one of them over her brown arm and withdrew a crumpled wad—the money she had been able to rake up by ransacking her aunt’s and Mrs. Wiseman’s and Miss Jameson’s things. She reached her hand and he drew her to her feet. “You’d better carry the money,” she said, giving it to him. “Now, for breakfast,” she said, clutching his hand.