XXXI
Toward sunset he came to, partially, passed his hand across his enchanted eyes, and rose from the hammock beside her.
"Dearest," he said, "that swamp ought to be partly drained by this time. Suppose we walk over before dinner and take a look?"
Still confused by the sweetness of her dream, she sat up, and he drew her to her feet, where she stood twisting up her beautiful hair, half smiling, shy, adorable.
Then together they walked slowly out along the Causeway, so absorbed in each other that already they had forgotten the explosion, and even the Maltese cross itself.
It was only when they were halted by the great[315] gap in the Causeway that Jean Sandys glanced to the left, over a vast bed of shining mud, where before blue wavelets had lapped the base of the Causeway.
Then her vaguely smiling eyes flew wide open; she caught her lover's arm in an excited clasp.
"O Jim!" she exclaimed. "Look! Look! It is true! It is true! Look at the bed of the lake!"
They stood trembling and staring at the low, squat, windowless coquina house, reeking with the silt of centuries, crawling with stranded water creatures.