They stood for a few moments looking at all these wonderful beauties of the mysterious night—which dwellers in the country so rarely appreciate, because to them they are common, daily things—and listening to the soft, long-drawn murmuring of the sea upon the shingle. Then they went forward to the edge of the cliff, but although Morris threw the fur rug over it Mary did not seat herself in the comfortable-looking deck chair. Her desire for repose had departed. She preferred to lean upon the low grey wall in whose crannies grew lichens, tiny ferns, and, in their season, harebells and wallflowers. Morris came and leant at her side; for a while they both stared at the sea.
“Pray, are you making up poetry?” she inquired at last.
“Why do you ask such silly questions?” he answered, not without indignation.
“Because you keep muttering to yourself, and I thought that you were trying to get the lines to scan. Also the sea, and the sky, and the night suggest poetry, don’t they?”
Morris turned his head and looked at her.
“You suggest it,” he said, with desperate earnestness, “in all that shining white, especially when the moon goes in. Then you look like a beautiful spirit new lit upon the edge of the world.”
At first Mary was pleased, the compliment was obvious, and, coming from Morris, great. She had never heard him say so much as that before. Then she thought an instant, and the echo of the word “spirit” came back to her mind, and jarred upon it with a little sudden shock. Even when he had a lovely woman at his side must his fancy be wandering to these unearthly denizens and similes.
“Please, Morris,” she said almost sharply, “do not compare me to a spirit. I am a woman, nothing more, and if it is not enough that I should be a woman, then——” she paused, to add, “I beg your pardon, I know you meant to be nice, but once I had a friend who went in for spirits—table-turning ones I mean—with very bad results, and I detest the name of them.”
Morris took this rebuff better than might have been expected.
“Would you object if one ventured to call you an angel?” he asked.