Cary pushed a small stone along with the toe of her walking boot, and was silent. Indeed she scarcely spoke all during the walk to the Point.
If he had been at the Dargai Hill, she kept thinking, if—he—had!
She followed Stewart out to the extreme end of the peninsula, and she stood quietly listening as he pointed out to her, how in high tide the waters met across the narrow neck and isolated it from the mainland. Sometimes, he told her, the waters swept across the island so left, and he showed her where they had come up and left their mark upon the trunks of the trees.
And then the spell of her silence fell upon him and they stood quiet and motionless, looking out to sea.
They waited so, for the sun to sink slowly behind the distant line of the horizon, and they watched the big white clouds change and clothe themselves in the pink and purple of the coming sunset, like air nymphs getting ready for a ball. The quietness of the day's death was on them. Once or twice they spoke.
"It reminds me of the Point, at home," said Cary once.
He smiled.
"I knew it would," he answered.
She sat down on a big rock at the end of the Point and looked up at the changing clouds. He walked a little way down to the water's edge and then he came back slowly.
The vision of the Highlanders and the Dargai heights, that had haunted him since Trevelyan had gone, faded. There seemed to be nothing in the world that mattered except her sitting there on the big gray stone, with the water lapping at her feet, and the glow of the sunset on her face.