Possibly it was a feeling of disquiet under silent observation which caused Tollman, after luncheon, to turn his guest over to his wife for entertainment, and Haymond acquiesced with enthusiasm to Conscience's suggestion that they go for a sail to the greater bay.
To Conscience this was all retrieving from monotony a little scrap of the life for which she had so eagerly yearned: the life of progress, stimulus and breadth.
And then they were in the tilting boat, racing before a wind which bellied the taut mains'l and drummed upon its canvas. She and Eben had, once or twice, taken this same sail, but he had endured in patience rather than enjoyed it.
On those occasions Ira had revealed a surly personality, which now expanded and mellowed into conversation as Haymond asked questions about the setting of eel traps and lobster pots and the management of fish weirs.
The wind toyed so persistently with Conscience's dark hair that she took it down from its coils and let it hang in heavy braids. The color rose in her cheeks and the gleam to her eyes making them starry, and a lilt sang in her voice.
There was a wealth of sapphire and purple in the water; there were thin shore lines of vivid green and dazzling sand. Sails bronzed and reddened in the sun and the distance. Gulls quarreled and screamed as they fished—and everything was young.
"Them's mackerel gulls," volunteered Ira as he pointed to two birds perched on a precariously buffeted buoy. "There's a sayin' that 'When the whippoorwills begin to call, the mackerel begins to run'—then the gulls come, too."
But as the sailboat drew near its landing stage again and the sunset was fading into twilight, the fires died slowly, too, in the eyes of Conscience Tollman and she felt that a vacation had ended.
There seemed to be in the sunlight of the following morning a tempered and Sabbath stillness.