It was while she was trying to convey to Jocelyn that whatever he did with her hair she was doomed to be looked at, and was at the same time shaking it back so as to help him to get it neat—it looked startlingly vivid against the grey background of sea and sky—that a young man called Carruthers, out for a run with his dog after a stuffy Sunday family lunch, came round the bend of the path, whistling and swinging his stick, and stopped dead when he saw her.
His dog rushed on, however, and ran up to the spirit-thing, and sniffed and wagged round it, and seemed quite pleased; so it was real, it wasn’t a spirit, it wasn’t the beginning in his own brain of hallucinations on burning, Blake-like lines.
He stood gazing. He had never seen anything like that before,—no, by Jove, nor had most other people. ‘Oh, I say—don’t, don’t, don’t put it on yet!’ he nearly cried out as he saw the hat in the dark, Iberian-looking youth’s hands being raised quickly above the girl’s head when that confounded dog disturbed them, and knew that in another instant it would descend and the light go out.
The Iberian’s movements, however, were swift and decided, and the hat was not only put on but pulled on,—tugged on with vigour as far down over her eyes as it would go; and then, after a frowning glance round, the fellow drew her hand through his arm and walked her off quickly in the opposite direction.
There was nothing left for Carruthers but to call his dog—an attractive bitch, who would have been a Sealyham if it hadn’t been for something its mother did once,—and it wasn’t Carruthers’ fault that it too should chance to be called Sally.
‘Sally! Sally!’ he therefore very naturally shouted, raising his voice as much as possible, which was a great deal. ‘Sally! Come here! Sally! Come here, I tell you!’
The hills round St. Mawes reverberated with entreaties that Sally should come.
She did come, his Sally did, but behind it, running, came the Iberian as well. The girl was out of sight round the corner. Young Carruthers watched the hurrying approach of her companion with surprise, which increased when he saw the expression on his face.
‘How dare you! How dare you!’ shouted Jocelyn directly he was near enough; upon which Carruthers’ surprise became amazement.
‘What’s up?’ he inquired.