The thought seized upon his mind like a drug, and he stood in a tranced stillness of fascinated imagination, his eyes on the ship, his inner vision seeing himself and Rose standing on the deck. He was so held under the spell of his exquisite, enthralling dream, that he did not see a figure round the corner of the rough path, nor notice its slow approach. But he felt it, when its casual, roaming glance fell on him. As if called, he turned sharply and saw Rose standing a few yards away from him, looking at him with an expression of affrighted indecision. As his glance met hers, the dream broke and scattered, and he seemed to emerge out of a darkness that had in it something beautiful and baleful, into the healthy, pure daylight.
The alarm in Rose’s face died away, too. For a moment she stood motionless, then moved toward him slowly, with something of reluctance about her approach. She seemed to be coming against her will, as if obeying a summons in his eyes.
“I wasn’t sure it was you,” she said. “And then when I saw it was, I was going to steal away before you saw me. But you turned suddenly as if you heard me.”
“I felt you were there,” he answered.
It was natural that with Rose he should need to make no further explanation. She understood as she would always understand everything that was closely associated with him. He would never have to explain things to her, as he never, from their first meeting, felt that he needed to talk small talk or make conversation.
She came to a stop beside him, and they stood for a silent moment, looking down the bare wall of the quarry, a raw wound in the hill’s flank, to the docks below where the masts of ships rose in a forest, and their lean bowsprits were thrust over the wharves.
“You came just in time,” he said. “I walked up here this morning to have a think. I don’t know where the think was going to take me when you came round that corner and stopped it. What brought you here?”
“Nothing in particular. It was such a fine morning I thought I’d just ramble about, and I came this way without thinking. My feet brought me without my knowledge.”
“My think brought you,” he said. “That’s the second time it’s happened. It was a revolutionary sort of think, and there was a lot about you in it.”
He looked down at her, standing by his shoulder, and met her eyes. They were singularly pellucid, the clearest, quietest eyes he thought he had ever looked into. His own dropped before them to the bay below, touched and then quickly left the schooner which was beating its way toward them on the return tack.