Barefoot, she stood five feet one and she stood straight as a javelin. And shaped like a javelin was she, rounded and firm, and keen and swift. She did not have a beautiful face, she didn't even have a pretty face. She had a strong, dependable, friendly face. She looked you in the eye (her eyes had short thick lashes with a fine upward curve) and laughed with you in all friendliness.

And a pleasantness as of intoxication from finest wine spread through your being. You looked into her eyes (her eyes were liquid with pure merriment), and you knew that life was simple and beautiful and held not the dark and giddy terror of death.

Those were the days of magic when you first knew her. Days when the sunlight made bright the ground you walked on, filled the whole world with airy gold and your heart with song. Then was enchantment that rushed the days together like wind driving with furious breath silver clouds before it.

The meaning of life lay revealed before you and it was all so simple and so beautiful. You talked of death, yes, (as who is young and full of life does not) but death was a cordial rare and sweet. And once in all happy seriousness you told her, If you die before I die I shall think of you and every time I do I shall die, too.

You felt pleased with yourself for the apt paraphrase of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and though you noted how suddenly stilled was the bright liveliness of her face, it was as nothing, it was as the nothingness that bridges the interval from laughter to laughter, for there was laughter then, effortless and inexhaustible as the jets of sunlight that poured out of a smiling sky.

It was a matter of sky and wind and the sun at first, your knowing her. What was Mariveles where you were together at an excursion, but a memory of sunlight, a dazzling inundation upon a green-blue sea, cresting each wavelet with an instant of brittle glory?

It was really very simple, While the rest danced in one of the houses, you helped her across the bamboo rafts that lay piled on the sands until you came to the water's edge. Noon lay before you, white like a clamshell long washed by the sea. And the sea itself reached to the far horizon in a gentle tumult of blue and green.

Two brown urchins put you out to sea in an outrigger for fifty centavos, you remember.

And remembering, you know now that it was also very beautiful. You sat with you back to the brown lad at the stern and she sat with her back to the other brown fellow at the prow. So facing each other you looked at each other; there wasn't much to say.

Once when the houses on the shore began to grow hazy with distance you asked simply, Afraid?

No, she said, quite as simply.

And all around you was a downpour of that white perfect light which has the sun for its only source.

She loved the light of the sun (she was brown and unashamed), the free winds of the world, the waters and the sky.

A shining interval of blue sky and radiant light at Sunset Beach you will never forget. It was the first time that you saw her in a bathing suit.

You are lovely, you said. And she was.

Barefoot, she stood on the firm wet sand, facing you. Cool winds blew, and the long beautiful light of the day rained down upon her from an incredible sky! In the finder of the camera that you held, you saw all that five one of loveliness reduced in all its perfection to the size of a thumbnail. Swiftly you raised your eyes for a last glimpse or her (where is the camera that can rival the eye?), and she smiled at you.

She smiled at you, you remember, and brightness fell upon the sunlit air.

It was a perfect day. You swam out to sea so far (farther out than all the rest), that the icy cold of deep water clutched at your body. When you returned, she was walking along the shore looking for shells and you thought (crestfallen) that she hadn't watched you swim out so far.

You walked with her. You left the noisy crowd of bathers and soon were quite alone by yourselves except for a silent old man up to his waist in the water, fishing with rod and line.

She turned to you then and said, What made you swim out so far? I wanted to shout to you to turn back. Anything might have happened to you. Cramps-anything-a shark-it is so easy to die.

It is so easy to die, she said, and you laughed because you were so happy. It took so little to make you happy in those days (how the hours, the golden hours did fly!). The possibility that you might have met with accident was as nothing to the knowledge that she watched you as you swam out to sea, watched you and brooded over you.

The love that you bore her was like a tree inside you, and as you walked along the shore that day, it seemed to give forth burst after burst of luminous white flowers.

I am glad you came back safe and sound, she said. But don't do it again, she said, laughing quickly.

You scanned her face for a sign (what sign of love's flowering was there?) but she was looking at you and laughing in all friendliness.

It was the perfect friendliness of her smile that held you tongue chained. There was nothing that you could do but laugh with her.

And if I had not come back? You said laughing still. If parts of me were now decorating the inside of a shark?

Poor shark! She said.

Ah, there was laughter then, effortless, inexhaustible as the sunlit air.

THEN came a time that you sat on the warm sand that smelled sweetly of sea-weed and escaping heat of the sun. It was late afternoon. You had been out to Sunset Beach once again.

The sun stood on the farthest edge of the sea and laid out across the shining waters a carpet of gold, straight and dazzling. You were at one end of that carpet as you sat there hugging you knees, a little shivery, for the wind had grown cold.

Silently you waited for the sun to sink. And, sinking, it drew with it slowly the shining carpet of golden light laid on the graying surface of the sea. You held your breath as all the light of the world seemed drawn and concentrated in one sparkling drop of red poised on the sea's farthest edge. It vanished. For a moment all living voices were stilled. And suddenly night was there, soft and dark like a shroud.
She scooped a handful of sand as you rose to your feet and strewed it around with a gesture of loving tenderness.

What are you doing? You asked, mystified.

Day is dead. I am burying day, she said.

A feeling of gloom invaded your spirit and less from mirth than from a need to shake off the unwelcome mood, you laughed. But in the middle or your laughter it seemed that all around you sounded Death's dark footfalls, softer than the falling grains of sand.

You could not repress a shiver of nameless fear.

Cold? She asked.

No, you answered.

You stood perfectly still.

Then you turned to her and slowly, your lips forming the words automatically (so often had you said the words to yourself), you told her of your love.

She listened standing there beside you in the dusk on the warm sand, straight and lovely and very still.

And when you were through she did not speak but covered her face with her hands as though bewildered, you did not take her in your arms. You did not touch her.

Her hands came down and in the dusk you faced each other. In the way she stood (straight and true as a javelin), in the way she offered you her face to read, you found your answer and a bitter disappointment came upon you.

Don't say it, you begged. I shouldn't have spoken.

I am sorry, she said. Truly I am sorry. She gave you both her hands. Some other time let's talk about it again. Who knows? I like you very much. Truly I do.

She stood very close to you, all you had to do was draw her into your arms, but you did not, for even the dusk could not hide the look of perfect friendliness on her eager young face. And looking at that face (it was not a beautiful face, not a pretty face), your disappointment became as nothing, the old intoxication came upon you once more, and love for her blossomed inside you like a tree with white luminous flowers. Some other time, who knows? Some other time.

BUT there was no other time.

She fell ill, and the next thing you knew she was dead. Swiftly inexplicably, she sickened and died.

She was gone. And she was wrong and all the poets were wrong. It is not easy to die. You think of her and it is not easy to die.