'Out of the books?'
'Yes, beside the dreamland of the books. All the earth is not peopled with shipwrights and skippers. There is a world——'
He hesitated, for he was afraid of alarming her; it seemed to him that, were she displeased, she would send him spinning down the cliff with short ceremony.
'There is a world where life is always en fête, where women are treated not as goods and chattels and beasts of burden, but as sovereigns and sorceresses; where you yourself——'
'I shall never go there,' she said, abruptly interrupting him. 'Do not talk about it. It makes me restless. I feel as I do when I look over there.'
She pointed northward, where the unseen shore was.
'I see the sun shine on the mountains, and I see a dazzle of gold, a gleam of white, a long low line under the blue of the hills, and I know that is what they call the world, the big world; but I never land there; it is not for me.'
'Let me take you,' he said softly.
'No,' she said with petulance and resolution. 'Grandfather does not allow me ever to see the mainland without him; he says it is accursed, that the people are all mad. And now, as you have eaten and drunk all you will, it will be best that you should go: he may return any time, and he does not love strangers.'
'But I may come back and bring you your portrait?'