The tinny sound of a buoy bell came to him now, marking some channel far to the right. The sea itself seemed of a sudden louder. A vast flock of birds passed overhead, uttering cries unlike those of the gulls or any other birds he had ever heard. The bells—somewhere behind him now—took on a new voice, answering the random notes of the buoy with something patterned, something deeper. And the singing... . For the first time the singing grew louder. It seemed very near.

A dark form appeared suddenly in his path. A small hill or—

He stumbled again, trying to avoid it. As he fell, the singing ceased. The bells ceased. He looked upon bleak walls and vacant eye-like windows—battlemented, turreted edifice emergent from duneside—drear, dark, partly crumbling, beside a gray, unruffled tarn. He was falling—somehow too fast—toward it... .

Then the fog swirled and the veil fell away. What had seemed a distant prospect was almost within reach, as an instant rearrangement of perspective showed it to be a castle of sand constructed on a slope above a tidal pool.

His outflung arm struck a wall. A tower toppled. The great gateway was broken.

"No!" came a cry. "You mean thing! No!"

And she was upon him, small fists pummeling his shoulder, head, back.

"I'm—sorry," he said. "I didn't mean—I fell. I'll help. I'll put it back—the way—it was."

"Oh."

She stopped striking him. He drew back and regarded her.

She had very gray eyes, and brown hair lay disheveled upon her brow. Her hands were delicate, fingers long. Her blue skirt and white blouse were sand-streaked, smudged, the hem of the skirt sodden. Her full lips quivered as her gaze darted from him to the castle and back, but her eyes remained dry.

"I'm sorry," he repeated.

She turned her back to him. A moment later her bare foot kicked forward. Another wall fell, another tower toppled.

"Don't!" he cried, rising, reaching to restrain her. "Stop! Please stop!"