What a nuisance she was, he thought. Whatever he said to Pamela, she wanted to be bright and discuss it, and argue and interest him.... It was his fault also that he had allowed her to come here, and that had the same effect on him as on Tiberius. “Yes, that’s quite true. We always are angry with others when we’ve been mistaken in them or have injured them,” she said. Colin suddenly registered the fact that he hated her. The knowledge seemed to spring from no particular source; it was blown to him perhaps on this evening breeze. In consequence he exerted himself to charm and attract her, for that was the path that led to the completest outrage and humiliation for her. He hated her passion for him, and therefore inflamed it, so that she would pay the more for it. “I don’t believe you ever wanted to injure anybody,” he said. “You’ve got the most adorable nature, do you know?” “My dear, how about compliments?” she asked. “Great friends don’t pay each other compliments, you told me.” “Well, I wanted to let you know that I had noticed it. Leave it at that.... Ah, look; the loveliest light of all is beginning. Just before sunset sea and sky and land all get inside an opal. The hard wearisome brilliance of the afternoon fades, and you have ten minutes of pure fairyland. Everything is unreal and exquisite: you can hardly believe in the beauty of it. I could almost jump over the cliff myself for the sheer joy of falling, free and unfettered, through the air. One is too much anchored when one is on land. Swimming you get some feeling of being unattached to anything, but think if one was falling, falling through the air. And what does it matter if there’s death at the end? One would have had a perfect moment. Fancy being happy, though only for a few seconds!” He sat with knees drawn up to his chin, looking outwards over the bright gulf of air, below which the sea lay blue and unflecked, and he heard her take a quick breath as she looked at him. Then, turning, he saw the fire in her eyes so nearly breaking into flame. “Fairyland!” he said. “And you look a real native of it, Pamela.... My dear, ‘real native’! It sounds as if I were calling you a Whitstable oyster. And then, as one fairyland fades--look, it’s going quickly--another, the fairyland of night, begins. I could sit here, at least so I believe this moment, all night with you, watching the stars wheel, and fancying I could hear the rustle of the world as it span through space, until it came out of the tunnel of the night into morning again. But you would have to be close by me. I couldn’t do it alone; I should get self-conscious, and that’s the ruin of magic. My dear, how bored you would get before sunrise.”