Alixe started, and sat up straight, while a high tenor voice cried out: “Ho, Mistress Alixe, ’tis thou, then? Is’t I that discover thee in thy retreat, or thou that hast invaded mine?”
“Ohé, David, thou’st startled me! Meseemeth I all but slept.”
“’Tis a day for sleep, but this is not the place. Is there room there on the ledge? Wilt let me up? ’Tis wet enough, below here.”
“Yea; thy feet slop i’ the sand, and thou’st frightened two crabs. Canst climb hither?”
He laughed merrily, and scrambled up beside her, his light body seeming but a feather in weight. She made room beside her, and he sat down there, cocking one parti-colored knee upon the other, and beginning lightly: “Thus bravely, then, thou comest into the cave of the water goblin. Art thou, perchance, courted here by some sly water sprite?”
The maiden, responding to his mood, laughed also. “Not unless thou’lt play the sprite, Master David. Say—wilt court me?”
“Nay, sister. Thou and I, and all i’ the Castle up above, know each other in a way that admits no love-foolery. Heigho!” The little man’s tone had changed to one of whimsical earnestness. Alixe made no immediate reply to his speech, and so, to entertain himself, he took from his open bag two pebbles, and began to toss them lightly into the air, one after the other.
For a few seconds Alixe watched him absently. Then she said: “Those pebbles, David, are like thee and me. Watch now which will be the first to fall from thy hand. Thou’rt the mottled; I the gray.”
“And I, damsel,” said he, as he began to handle them a little less carelessly, “I, who sit here forever, for my amusement tossing into the air two light souls, catching them when they come back to me, and flinging them again away—who am I, I ask?”
“Thou, David?” Alixe’s face took on a little, bitter smile. “Why, thou art that inexorable thing that men call God. Wilt never drop thy stones from their wearisome sphere, Almighty One?”
“They will not fall. They return to me evermore,” he answered; and, after another toss or two, he let them both remain in his hand while he looked at them for a moment. After that he put them back into his bag again, with a curious smile. “That, then, is our end,” he remarked, at last.