"I don't know. How do you mean?"
"As if you had something to tell me."
"Perhaps--perhaps I have," he answered.
He was on the verge, the very verge of confession. She put her arm
through his. When she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not die
utterly away.
"Tell it me," she said. "I love to hear everything you tell me. I don't
think you could ever tell me anything that I should not understand."
"Are you--are you sure?"
"I think so."
"But"--he suddenly remembered some words of hers that, till then, he had
forgotten--"but you had something to tell me."
"Yes."
"I want to hear it."
He could not speak yet. Perhaps presently he would be able to.
"Let us go up to the top of the mountain," she answered. "I feel as if we
could see the whole island from there. And up there we shall get all the
wind of the morning."
They turned towards the steep, bare slope and climbed it, while the sun
rose higher, as if attending them. At the summit there was a heap of
stones.
"Let us sit here," Hermione said. "We can see everything from here, all
the glories of the dawn."
"Yes."
He was so intensely preoccupied by the debate within him that he did not
remember that it was here, among these stones where they were sitting,
that he had hidden the fragments of Hermione's letter from Africa telling
him of her return on the day of the fair.
They sat down with their faces towards the sea. The air up here was
exquisitely cool. In the pellucid clearness of dawn the coast-line looked
enchanted, fairy-like and full of delicate mystery. And its fading, in
the far distance, was like a calling voice. Behind them the ranges of
mountains held a few filmy white clouds, like laces, about their rugged
peaks. The sea was a pale blue stillness, shot with soft grays and mauves
and pinks, and dotted here and there with black specks that were the
boats of fishermen.
Hermione sat with her hands clasped round her knees. Her face, browned by
the African sun, was intense with feeling.
"Yes," she said, at last, "I can tell you here."
She looked at the sea, the coast-line, then turned her head and gazed at
the mountains.
"We looked at them together," she continued--"that last evening before I
went away. Do you remember, Maurice?"