That meant something to Bellair. Later when it was dark, and they had supped, he said:
“It’s good—the way you count me in, but you shouldn’t. I don’t belong, much as I’d like to. I misjudged you at first. I misjudged Fleury—and him——” he pointed over her shoulder to the sea.
“It will be gone in the morning,” she whispered, patting his hand. “We are three—and the child.”
“Three, and God bless you,” said Fleury. “Three and the little Gleam——”
“The Gleam,” the woman repeated, holding the child closer. “I love that.”
“We are three and we follow the Gleam.”
7
Fleury took the child. The Faraway Woman sat straight in her seat, so that Bellair wondered at her strength. Her strength came to him. The deeps [Pg 148]of his listening were opened to her low voice. The story came to them with all the colour and contour of her thought-pictures—a richness from the unspoken words which cannot be given again:
“It’s about a little girl whom I will call Olga,” she said. “That is really her name, and the story is the little girl’s truly. I shall only tell part of it to-night, for it is long and I would only tell you the happy part—to-night.
“Olga’s father and mother and the other children lived in a low house by the open road that led to Hamilton. He raised sheep for a living on the rolling pasture-lands near the Waikata river, a hundred miles south of Auckland.... Yes, Olga was born in New Zealand—the youngest of a houseful of sisters. They belong more to the latter part of the story which I shall not tell to-night—just the happy part to-night.... The first thing that Olga remembered as belonging to the Great Subject was spoken by her father one evening when they were all together at their supper of bread and milk: