Her trembling became violent.
"Come here, Ynys—I want——"
He did not finish. His hand shot quickly forth. The next moment it held what she had striven to hide. He was gazing at the silver mark that ran round the outer edge of her foot near the little toe as a vein runs round a pebble.
She had twisted her body so that her face lay on the grass, covered with her hands. She made one feeble movement to draw the foot from his hand, and then lay still. When, presently, he put it gently down, she made no further attempt to hide it; what was the good, since he had seen? It lay still now, a little crinkled brown sole with bits of vegetation pressed into it, and, running across it, that old thread, silver, like the wedding-ring of her mother—that hard little sole that had made the kidney-shaped footprints on the Llanyglo beach, that had pattered after pedestrians on the road, and that would take to the roads again rather than be pressed into a shoe and walk the pavements of a town.
Yet, though he had seen the foot, she seemed determined he should not see her face too. Presently she was conscious that he was trying to do so, that he was gently trying to draw away the concealing hands. That she resisted. "Ynys! Ynys!" he was saying remorsefully in her ear. She lay quite still, and "Ynys! Ynys!" he continued to repeat, over and over again.
At last he heard that uniquely soft voice of hers in reply. She spoke into the grass, not sobbingly, only a little dully.
"I 'ould not show you," she begged him—movingly begged him—to believe.
"Ynys—dear!—--"
"Indeed you ask me, one day, if I take off my boots and stock-kings, and I 'ould not——"
"No, no——" he soothed her.