"I don't know that we should. We should get into the Landes, and they're by way of being trackless. Anyhow it would mean walking for hours; and it is less exhausting for you to sit here. The Petrel must turn up sooner or later."
Remembering her talk with Tinker in the morning, Dorothy believed that it would be later—much later; but as she could hardly unfold her reasons for the belief, she said nothing.
For a long time they were silent. Listening to the faint thunder of the Bay behind them, the lapping of the water at their feet, and the stirring of the pines, she filled slowly with a sense of their aloofness from the world, and a perfect content in being out of it alone with him. For his part, Sir Tancred was ill at ease; he foresaw that unless the Petrel came soon a lot of annoying gossip might spring from their accident, and he was distressed on her account. On the other hand, he, too, found himself enjoying being alone with her out of the world.
At last she said softly, "I feel as though we were on a desolate, far-away island."
"I wish to goodness we were!" he cried, with a fervour which thrilled her.
"You'd find it very dull," she said, with a faint, uncertain laugh.
"Not with you," he said quietly.
She was silent; and he took another turn up and down before he said, half to himself, "It would simplify things so, we should be equal."
"Equal?"
"Oh, not from the personal point of view!" he said quickly. "You'd always be worth a hundred of me. But on a desolate island money wouldn't count."