"I am not alone when your voice is near me. Now don't you fidget yourself, dear friend. I like these little excitements. I have told you so before. Listen. How calm and silent it all is; the place; the night! The mind seems to fill with great ideas, and to feel its immortality."
She spoke with solemnity, and he heard in silence.
Indeed it was a reverend time and place. The sea, whose loud and penetrating tongue had, in some former age, created the gully where they both sat apart, had of late years receded and kissed the sands gently that calm night; so gently, that its long, low murmur seemed but the echo of tranquillity.
The voices of that pair sounded supernatural, one speaking up, and the other down, the speakers quite invisible.
"Mr. Hazel," said Helen, in a low, earnest voice; "they say that night gives wisdom even to the wise; think now, and tell me your true thoughts. Has the foot of man ever trod upon this island before?"
There was a silence due to a question so grave, and put with solemnity, at a solemn time, in a solemn place.
At last Hazel's thoughtful voice came down. "The world is very, very, very old. So old, that the words 'Ancient History' are a falsehood, and Moses wrote but as yesterday. And man is a very old animal upon this old, old planet; and has been everywhere. I cannot doubt he has been here."
Her voice went up. "But have you seen any signs?"
His voice came down. "I have not looked for them. The bones and the weapons of primeval man are all below earth's surface at this time of day."
There was a dead silence. Then Helen's voice went up again. "But in modern times? Has no man landed here from far-off places, since ships were built?"