All around her was a golden cloud of sand; it seemed to have been stirred up by her startled movement on seeing him.

For a moment she was still, resting thus close, and he could see distinctly that around her white shoulders there was a coil of what seemed like glistening rounded scales.

He could not decide whether the brightness in her eye was that of laughing ease or of startled excitement.

Then she turned and darted away from him, and having put about forty feet between them, she turned and looked back with easy defiance.
His eyes, fascinated by what was to him an awful thing, were trying to penetrate the sparkling water and see the outlines of the form whose clumsy skin seemed to hang in horrid folds, stretching its monstrous bulk under the waves.

His vision was broken by the sparkling splash which the maiden deliberately made with her hands, as if divining his curiosity and defying it.