The poem that some one had made about her? … yes, for sure, how could he be forgetting who it was. Was it not Isla, and he a poet too, another Ian Mòr they said.
“Another Ian Mòr.” As he repeated the words below his breath, he bent over his wife. Her white breast rose and fell, the way a moonbeam does in moving water.
Then he knelt. When he took the slim white hand in his she did not wake. It closed lovingly upon his own.
A smile slowly came and went upon the dreaming face—ah, lovely, white, dreaming face, with the hidden starry eyes. There was a soft flush, and a parting of the lips. The half-covered bosom rose and fell as with some groundswell from the beating heart.
“Silis,” he whispered. “Silis … Silis …”
She smiled. He leaned close above her lips.
“Ah, heart o’ me,” she whispered, “O Isla, Isla, mo rùn, moghray, Isla, Isla, Isla!”
Sheumas drew back. He too was like the man in her dream, for it was dead-white he was, with the sweat in great beads upon his face.
He made no noise as he went back to the hearthside, and took his wet clothes from where he had hung them before the smoored peats, and put them on again.
Then he went out.