Never had the girl known Trevelyan to be so eloquent; never had she seen him as he was to-day. Now Trevelyan's voice was blithe with the blitheness of glad remembered things; now it broke with feeling, or vibrated with the passion of reviving scenes long dead to life. He seemed not to be speaking of himself. He was telling her the story of an English boy, Scottish bred; of his wild escapades; of his love of freedom and unrestricted things; of his dangers and his hopes; of what he meant to be when he became a man!
And Cary, held fast by the magic of the story, felt her pulses throb; her being thrill. An unreasonable regret that she had not been a Scottish child to follow where he led, up the high crags or down into the black caves, took possession of her; and she recalled a picture of a sea churned into foam; of a boat drifting out toward the waste of ocean; and above the gray surface of the stone-hued waters, a boy's head turned landward.
Once, in following Trevelyan from one room to another, she glanced out of the window and noticed vaguely that the heavy rain drops lay upon the glass. Later, she was conscious of the dull booming of thunder, echoing among the nearby crags and losing itself in the beat of the surf. Then a flash of vivid lightning lit up the sudden darkness that had fallen on the room.
Trevelyan rushed to the window. The thralldom of the Scotch boy's story was upon him still.
"It's a storm!" he cried. "It's a storm come to welcome me!"
He turned to Cary.
"Come here!" he commanded, "where you can watch the sea and the storm fight it out together!"
She came instantly.
The darkness increased until they could not distinguish each other's faces. The thunder came and beat itself against the crags and spent itself. Now and again they could see, by the glare of the prolonged lightning, the waters lashed into a white fury. Once, by its light, she looked at Trevelyan's face. It was white and he was breathing deeply. He was looking seaward and seemed unconscious of her presence. Once, he flung out his hand and it touched hers. It was colder than the storm chill in the air. Once, she looked at him again, and he, turning, met her eyes. Some power as mighty as the storm held her look to his, and then above the beating of the thunder on the crags and the booming, of the surf, she heard his voice.
"Just you and I and the storm! You and I in all the world—all that the world holds!" She felt his hand upon her shoulder; she felt its coldness through her heavy dress and she shrank away from him, her voice and her words broken, with a nameless fear.