At the confession, Nan’s mood of fear that Gilian had conferred on her was gone. She drew back and laughed with as much heartiness as at his story of the heron’s nest. The dusk was all around and they were all alone, lost in a magic garden, but she forgot all in this new revelation of her companion’s strange belief. She turned and ran across the lawn, crying as she went, “Follow me, follow me!” and Gilian, all the ecstasy of that lingering moment on the edge of fancy gone, ran after her, feeling himself a child of dream, and her the woman made for action.
A sadden opening in the thicket revealed the shore, the highway, the quay with its bobbing lamps, the town with its upper windows lighted. At the gateway of the garden the Cornal met them, He was close on them in the dusk before he knew them, and seeing Gilian he peered closely in the girl face.
“Who’s this?” said he abruptly.
Gilian hesitated, vaguely fearing to reveal her identity, and Nan shrank back, all her memories of conversation in Maam telling her that here was an enemy.
Again the Cornal bent and looked more closely, lifting her chin up that he might see the better. She flashed a glance of defiance in his scarred old parchment face, and he drew his hand back as if he had been stung.
“Nan! Nan!” cried he, with a curious voice. “What witchery is this?” He was in a tremble, Then he started and laughed bitterly. “Oh no, not Nan!” said he. “Oh no, not Nan!” with the most rueful accent, almost chanting it as if it were a dirge.
“‘It is Nan,” said Gilian.
“It is her breathing image,” said the old man. “It is Nan, no doubt, but not the Nan I knew.”
She turned and sped home by the seaside, without farewell, alarmed at this oddity, and Gilian and the Cornal stood alone, the Cornal looking after her with a wistfulness in his very attitude.
“The same, the same, the very same!” said he to himself, in words the boy could plainly hear. “Her mother to the very defiance of her eye.” He clutched Gilian rudely by the shoulder. “What,” said he; “were you wandering about with that girl for? Answer me that. They told me you were off after the soldiers, and I came up here hoping it true. It would have been the daft but likeable cantrip I should have forgiven in any boy of mine; it would have shown some sign of a sogerly emprise. And here you are, with a lass wandering! Where were you?”