"The sea-birds are fierce wild things that live by prey. One associates them with elemental strife—the white tide-surge across desolate sands and the pounding of the combers on weedy reefs—and not with domestic peace. That's the lot of the tame land-birds that haunt the sheltered copse."
"And cannot one have sympathy with these?"
"Oh, yes. I've often stopped to listen while a speckled thrush sang its love-song among the bare ash-boughs in our rain-swept North. The joyful trilling goes straight to one's heart."
"Where our thrushes sing, you can, if you listen, hear the distant roar of the sea. It's a more insistent call than the other."
"But only if you listen! Cannot you close your ears?"
"That might be wiser. It depends upon your temperament."
Evelyn was silent for the next minute or two, and Grahame mused. He had felt the charm of the girl's beauty, and suspected in her a spirit akin to his. She had courage, originality, and, he thought, a longing, hitherto curbed by careful social training, to venture beyond the borders of a tame, conventional life. It was possible that he might strengthen it; but this would not be playing a straight game. For all that, he was tempted, and he smiled as he recalled that in earlier days his ancestors had stolen their brides.
"Why are you amused?" Evelyn asked.
"An idle thought came into my mind," he said awkwardly.