In the days that followed, a softness and summery bloom came continually to the Faraway Woman’s eyes. His heart quickened when she turned to him. They moved in and out from the cottage to grounds, again and again.
“It’s unreal to me,” she would say. “I wonder if it will ever seem ours? I know it won’t, while you are away. I could live here fifty years until I seemed a part of the cottage and grass and trees, and I would feel a pilgrim resting——”
“It is part of you now, and always has been,” he said. “You are at home on high ground and you must have the sea-distance. They belong to you. I think that is what made you so hard for me to understand.”
“Was I hard for you?”
“I was so fresh from the little distances and the short-sight of things—from looking down——”
“I wonder if any one ever was so willing to be seen on his worst side?” she asked. “I really believe you know very little about yourself.... He saw—the real side.”
“He saw good everywhere,” said Bellair.
“... I wonder why I was strange to you at first?” she repeated, after a moment. “You were not strange to me.”
“Not when I spent so much time at the great cane chair?”
“No. You seemed to be studying. I could see that you didn’t belong there. You appeared to be interested in it all—as if he were a part of the ship——”