"Come and sit down, love. There, now, don't fidget! What was it about?" Does he look pale?—thinks Rosalind—or is it only the vanished glow?
He is uncommunicative. Suppose they go out for a turn before dinner, he suggests. They can walk down to the jetty, to meet Sarah and her medical adviser. Soon said, soon settled. Ten minutes more, and they are on their way to the fisher dwellings: experiencing three-quarters of a gale, it appears, on the testimony of an Ancient Mariner in a blue and white-striped woollen shirt, who knows about things.
"That was very queer, that recurrence!" Thus Gerry, after leaving the Ancient Mariner. "It was just as the little edge of the sun went behind the bank. And what do you think my mind hooked it on to, of all things in the world?" Rosalind couldn't guess, of course. "Why, a big wheel I was trying to stop, that went slowly—slowly—like the sun vanishing. And then just as the sun went it stopped."
"Was there anything else?" Entire concealment of alarm is all Rosalind can attend to.
"No end of things, all mixed up together. One thing very funny. A great big German chap.... I say, Rosalind!"
"What, Gerry darling?"
"Do you recollect, when we were in Switzerland, up at that last high-up place, Seelisberg—Sonnenberg—do you remember the great fat Baron that gave me those cigars, and sang?"
"Remember the Baron? Of course I do. Perfectly!" Rosalind contrived a laugh. "Was he in it?" Perhaps this was rash. But then, not to say it would have been cowardice, when it was on her tongue-tip. Let the nettle be grasped.
"He was in it, singing and all. But the whole thing was mixed up and queer. It all went, quite suddenly. And I should have lost him out of it, as one loses a dream, if it hadn't been for seeing him in Switzerland. It was something to hold on by. Do you understand?"