"It's beautiful," she said, "but it's terrible! The beat of the sea on the crags always seems to be chanting something that I can't understand. It's a foolish idea, isn't it?"
Trevelyan walked down to the water's edge.
"It's been chanting to me ever since I was born," he replied.
He looked out over the quiet waters.
"The sea here don't talk to me," he went on. "It never did. It isn't like my Scotland! Come, we'd better walk a little; you'll get cold standing."
She gathered the cashmere that had slipped from her shoulders around her, and brought it up, covering her head. Her face white as the white moonlight looked out from its folds. Once a wave bolder than its fellows, crept up and wet her feet and the edge of the long skirt she was holding with one hand. She scarcely noticed it. Once she turned her face away from Trevelyan's and looked out across the shining sea, to where it lay dark against the horizon. A great pity and a great awe, of something she could not define, lay heavy upon her and made her silent. It was as if this "good-bye" was to be the longest she had ever said. From the house, showing through the trees, came a stream of light. It was from the music room and it mingled with the white radiance that lay across the sea. And then through the quiet, there stole the first, faint notes of John's flute. The music began softly and caressingly, and rose and filled the spaces all around them. It sobbed and moaned and called entreatingly to her, and then it sank into a marvelous crescendo; only to throb again against the silence—still entreating her to return, before it faded slowly and died away altogether.
The sobbing and the moaning of it pulsed in Trevelyan's brain. This was good-bye. It was good-bye as he had never dreamed it. He could have fallen down before that white moon-touched face and cried the good-bye out, clinging to her feet. He could have cried it out, his head upon her breast; he could have cried it out, with her resting in his arms, but silence laid its seal on him instead.
Out in India, with Mackenzie, in the awful shadow of the plague, he would remember her so, with her white moon-touched face.
What had he done to hope for such a good-bye? Only a man who has won a woman could cry out his heart's fullness so; and he had lost her! What right had he to tell her that he was going away, hoping so to wrest from her some word of approbation or of pity? Might she not say something that she would regret afterwards? He could go back home, and he could write her briefly. Then she would remember this night. Then, whatever he had said or left unsaid to-night or in the note, she would understand.
As for him—out in India with Mackenzie, in the awful shadow of the plague, he would remember her so, with her white moon-kissed face. He would hear again, louder than the moans of sufferings, the wondrous love music of Stewart's flute and the song of the sea. It seemed to him he would hear it and see her so, if he were dying. And yet, he told himself, he would have given up his life right there before she should think that he had done this thing because of her approbation or her pity.