"A look of relief, almost a happy look, dawned on her face. 'I knew it was not about me! For I saw your two faces when you met on the hill, under my porchway.… Do you know that, at moments, you are very much alike?… Oh, in general, of course, there is no likeness at all.… But at certain moments.… And it was so when you met, there on the hill: I had to look from one to the other. It was plain in that instant that you hated one another—yes, and it might have been for a long time… ages and ages. But it could not have been about me, for you had not set eyes on me but within the minute.… I am glad, anyway, that it is not for my sake that you hate.'
"Her words came in faint, hurrying wafts, much as for days the wind had been ruffling after us. The sunset struck slantwise across her cheek and hung entangled in the brown tress that drooped low by her right temple. I tell you, Roddy, that if the old gods and goddesses in our school-books ever turned out to be mortal after all, she was one, and thus looked, and spoke as she died.…
"'I understand well enough,' she went on, 'the small things over which women quarrel.… Though they all seem very far away just now, I was a woman and could be jealous over any of them. But I never understood why men quarrelled, except for me, of course. … Was it over your work, do you tell me?'
"'Surely,' said I, 'a man's work—'
"'Yes. I know that it is so,' she answered me with a small sigh. 'Do you know that, far back, I come down from the Incas? and I dare say they thought less of work than of other things.… It is all thanks to your working that we three are alive, now.… I understand a little why men so much value their work.… But yet I do not understand why they drop their work to quarrel as they do. I understand it no better than the fighting of dogs.' She paused on that last word, and then, as though it had put new life into her, she sat erect and opened her eyes wider upon the horizon as she put the amazing question, 'Was it over a dog that you two hated?'
"It staggered me: but I caught at the first explanation. 'Oh, I see,' said I. 'Your husband has been telling you?'
"She didn't answer this at once.… At length, and as though my voice had taken long in reaching her, far out on the ocean where her gaze rested—'No,' said she, 'Pete has told me nothing. ... I never asked.… But if it is true, ay de mi! then that which I behold is not true.'
"'Of what are you speaking?' I asked.
"'I saw an island,' she answered, as one in a dream: 'and again I see it. It has two sharp peaks and one that would seem to be cut short. Lawns of green climb up to the peaks between forests. There is a ring of surf all about the shore… but the boat has found a passage through… and you and Pete are landing… and— strangest!—there is a dog leaping about on the shore to welcome you.'
"I was silent, not caring to break in upon her happy delirium. 'But I am not there,' she whispered, almost in a moan. 'Why should a dog be there and not I?' Still getting no word from me, she turned her eyes full on mine and repeated the question imperatively, almost indignantly. 'Why should it be a dog?—and not I, over whom you never hated?'