His low running laughter accompanying her voice had stimulated her to a gay audacity, which for the instant extinguished in her the little fear of him she had been barely conscious of.
“Do you know,” he said, “that you also aroused me from my sun-dreams?”
“Did I? And can't you resume them?”
“You save me the necessity.”
“Oh, that is a second-hand compliment,” she said disdainfully—“a weak plagiarism on what I conveyed very wittily. You were probably really asleep, and dreaming of bird-murder.”
He waited for her to finish, then, amused eyes searching, he roamed about until high on a little drifted sand dune he found a place for himself; and while she watched him indignantly, he curled up in the sunshine, and, dropping his head on the hot sand, calmly closed his eyes.
“Upon—my word!” she breathed aloud.
He unclosed his eyes. “Now you may dream; you can't avoid it,” he observed lazily, and closed his eyes; and neither taunts nor jeers nor questions, nor fragments of shells flung with intent to hit, stirred him from his immobility.
She tired of the attempt presently, and sat silent, elbows on her thighs, hands propping her chin. Thoughts, vague as the fitful breeze, arose, lingered, and, like the breeze, faded, dissolved into calm, through which, cadenced by the far beat of the ebb tide, her heart echoed, beating the steady intervals of time.
She had not meant to dream, but as she sat there, the fine-spun golden threads flying from the whirling loom of dreams floated about her, settling over her, entangling her in unseen meshes, so that she stirred, groping amid the netted brightness, drawn onward along dim paths and through corridors of thought where, always beyond, vague splendours seemed to beckon.