But there was silence--the silence of hard work--for the most part, as they toiled home with wind and tide against them. Yet the scene was beautiful as ever in the growing moonlight.
"We are not more than a mile from the house here, Marjory," said Will, as they rounded a point below the Narrowest; "but it will take us a good hour to get her to the boat-house, and I can't leave her here; it's spring tides, and the painter's not long enough. But I'll land you on that rock, and the laird will see you home. Mother will be getting anxious."
"I would rather stay," she was beginning, when Paul cut her short.
"Back water, bow; pull, Donald. Luff her a bit. Miss Carmichael, please. That will do." They were alongside the little jetty of rock, and he was out. "Your hand, please, the seaweed is awfully slippery. Donald, pass up those shells, will you, they are in my handkerchief. All right, Cameron. Give way."
It had all passed so quickly, and this masterful activity of Paul's was so surprising, that Marjory, rather to her own surprise, found herself following close on his heels as he forced a way for her through the dense thickets of bracken, or held back a briar from the path in silence. Yet the silence did not seem oppressive; it suited her own confusion, her own vague pleasure and pain. She had seen the Green Ray, but she had seen it through Paul Macleod's eyes. Yes; whether he would or not, they had seen it hand in hand. He might deny it, but the fact remained. He was one of those who could see it!
And Paul, as he walked on, felt that the silence intensified his clear pleasure and clearer pain. For there was no vagueness in his emotions. It was not the first time that the touch of a woman's hand had thrilled him through and through, as Marjory's had done as they looked out over the sunset sea; but it was the first time that such a thrill had not moved him to look upon the woman's face! And they had stood still, hand in hand, like a couple of children, staring at the Green Ray! What a fool he had been! What did it mean save something at which he had always scoffed, at which he meant always to scoff! And then the Green Ray? Was his brain softening that he should see visions and dream dreams? He, Paul Macleod, who loved and forgot all, save his own physical comfort. As everyone did in the end. And yet it was a familiar pleasure to be in love again honestly, a pleasure to feel his heart beating, to know that the girl he fancied was there beside him in the moonlight, that he could tell her of his heart-beats if he chose. But he did not choose. Love of that sort came and went! Did he not know it? Did he not know his own nature, and was not that enough? And yet, when they reached the high road a sudden desire to make her also understand it, made him say, abruptly:
"When do you begin work? In London, isn't it?"
"Yes; in November."
"And you are really going to waste life in a dull, dirty school, teaching vulgar little boys and girls."
"I shall teach them not to be vulgar."