Anne became conscious of this readjustment first and tried to find an impersonal path back to the reason for having come out at all, but could not. She grew gradually so conscious of the physical motion of walking that she felt she was obeying a natural law as inescapable as the force of gravity. She would put one foot before the other until they had reached the moaning sea two miles away.
By a tremendous effort she stopped. And then the alternative of going back to the house and watching Aunt Het's python-like embrace of Roger in general conversation, emerged from subconsciousness.
"There's an old Indian graveyard back a little; would you like to see it?" Without waiting his agreement, Anne turned into a depression between the dunes and led the way. "When I was a little girl, I used to think this was the most wonderful place in the world. We used to dig up beads and arrow heads and invent the most conventional Indian stories about braves and princesses."
Roger did not answer. The wind swept across the dune tops, leaving them in the warm seclusion of a sandy depression. Anne went lightly just before him, small and silvery blonde, her arms white and quiet by her sides, no physical effort disturbing her swift, quiet way over the shifting sand. A sudden turn brought them to it on a slope above the dunes. Anne stopped and waited for him. Together they climbed the short distance to the small square of parched earth, with its broken fence, once whitewashed, now peeled by sun and wind to leprous patches, like the little wooden crosses that marked the mounds within. At the corners four gaunt gum trees sighed and bent, chieftains wailing the degradation of the Christian burials below. Anne passed through an opening in the fence and Roger followed, tense now with the realization of Anne, of the moaning trees, of the wind searching over the earth, and, far away, the sea crying its everlasting plaint to the rocks.
Up one row and down another they went, Anne trying to read the rain-washed names on the tiny crosses. "You see, many of them were half-breeds, and Father Crowley was the only friend they really had among the whites, and so he managed to baptize most of them and bury them at last with the rites of the Church. I wonder what they really felt while he annointed them."
"Like fakirs, I suppose," Roger said quickly, and moved a little nearer to Anne.
She shook her head. "No, I don't think they felt like that. They're all gone now except one or two, but when I was a little girl there were a lot scattered through these hills, and I knew some of them. One was very old, wrinkled like an oak leaf, with the most piercing black eyes. I used to feel as if he had died, all but his eyes. We called him William Black, but he had a wonderful Indian name we never could pronounce and he would never tell what it meant. Most often, when we asked, he would grunt and walk away, but once he told me that his name was dead, and if he told it, it would come back and kill him. I didn't know what he meant, but now I think he was sad and ashamed of his people and despised us too much to even tell us what he had once meant among them. He was the only Indian I ever heard of who refused to be baptized. Nevertheless, when he died Father Crowley buried him over there. It was really just on the edge of the consecrated ground then, but one night the fence in that corner was broken down, and when they put it up William Black was outside. I think the others were very proud of William, but not so strong as he."
"Very likely," Roger muttered, and stepped nearer still.
She felt him so close that the slightest motion on her part would touch him, strong and alive against this eternal sleep of a dead race.
"On—on—a clear day—you can see the sea—from here, and the spindrift—high as the cliffs—in a rough surf." Her arm, so slim, so white, like a wisp of the fog caught in form, pointed toward the muffled calling.