"I am afraid you feel the heat, Margaret. It has been a very hot day."
"Is it hot?" Margaret asked vaguely, shading her eyes with her hand to look out over the marsh.
There was the sound of oars and a child's laugh, loud and careless, just beyond the wall. "Look out!" Ned cried.
"There, you've wet your feet!" The two women smiled. That boyish laugh was rare these days.
When the grandmother wheeled Ned into the house for his supper, Margaret and Falkner strolled out of the garden beside the marsh to a rocky knoll that jutted into the sea. They seated themselves under a scrawny pine whose roots were bathed by the incoming tide, and watched the twilight stillness steal across the marshes and the sea. There was no air and yet the ships out by Goose Island passed across the horizon, sails full set, as though moved by an unseen hand.
They knew each other so well! And yet in silent times like these their intimacy seemed always to go deeper, to reveal without the aid of speech new levels of understanding.
"I had a letter this morning from Marvin," Falkner remarked at last.
Margaret scooped up a handful of pebbles and let them fall through her thin fingers, waiting for the expected words.
"It is settled. We sail from New York the tenth."
"The tenth?"