He felt the more sure that his senses did not play him false because the arrangement of the human and fishy substance of the apparition did not tally with any preconceived ideas he had of mermaids.
Caius felt no loathing of the horrid form that seemed to be part of her.
He knew, as he had never known before, how much of coarseness there was in himself.

His hands and feet, as he looked down at them, seemed clumsy, his ideas clumsy and gross to correspond.

He knew enough to know that he might, by the practice of exercises, have made his muscles and brain the expression of his will, instead of the inert mass of flesh that they now seemed to him to be.

He might--yes, he might, if he had his years to live over again, have made himself noble and strong; as it was, he was mutely conscious of being a thing to be justly derided by the laughing eyes that looked up at him from the water, a man to be justly shunned and avoided by the being of the white arms and dimpled face.
And he sat upon the rock looking, looking.

It seemed useless to rise or speak or smile; he remembered the mirth that his former efforts had caused, and he was dumb and still.
Perhaps the sea-child found this treatment more uninteresting than that attention he had lavished on her on the former occasion; perhaps she had not so long to tarry.