"Adam, don't you tell," she said, looking shyly at me. Elizabeth is not given to shy looks, but to honest ones, eye to eye. "Promise me that you will never tell. Give me your hand on it."
I took her hand. It was a pretty hand and soft enough, with tapering fingers, but it was not such a pretty hand as Eve's.
"Elizabeth," I said to her, "I do not know anything to tell—anything that would be of interest. But—but you do not mind if I tell Eve, do you? And," I finished lamely enough, "I hope it—it will."
She laughed and sighed, and gave my hand a squeeze.
"Thank you," she said. "But Eve knows, I think."
Captain Fergus was standing by the rail, sniffing the wind and gazing out at the waters, and at the little swirls of foam that raced by, and at the bank of fog that chased us in. He was happy. I almost envied him. He had done his part, and he was doing it.
"Will you walk?" I asked Elizabeth. And we got up and walked, saying nothing.
The afternoon passed, and the wind died. As we drew near to the lighthouse that stands like a sentinel on its rock just within the entrance to the bay, the sun was far down in the west, the breeze was but the gentlest breath, and the surface of the water moved in slow, oily undulations. I stood with Elizabeth close beside the rail, and we gazed at the water that was red and gold.
The shadow of the tall lighthouse was thrown high on the sails, and passed slowly aft. The red sun was sitting on a distant hill bearded with cedars. The little oily waves were splotched with vermilion and blue and purple and gold, and the gold dazzled our eyes.
Not a ripple marked our passage. I gazed at the red sun, and he gazed back at me; and his red disc was half down behind the hill, and I could see it sink. And the sun sank behind the hill and had winked his last, and a broad smooch of red lay upon the western horizon. We watched the red fade to orange, then to saffron and to green, while two little saffron clouds with edges of flame floated high above, and the fog crept in stealthily below. And I heard Elizabeth sigh, and I looked down and she looked up.