The water below them was delicately flecked with white. No long rollers were riding in from the Atlantic, but the fresh April breeze was flicking the crests of little waves into foam; and, above, an ever-renewed drift of scattered white clouds threw coursing shadows upon the blues and purples of the curdling sea. Eileen and Thrale had walked southwards as far as Carn Voel to avoid the obstruction to vision of the Longships, and on three sides they looked out to an unbroken horizon of water, which on that bright morning was clearly differentiated from the impending sky. "One might forget--here," remarked Eileen, after a long silence. "If it were better to forget," said Jasper. Eileen drew up her knees until she could rest her chin upon them, embracing them with her arms. "What can one do?" she asked. "What good is it all, if there is no future?" "Just to live out one's own life in the best way," was the answer. She frowned over that for a time. "Do you really believe, dear," she said, when she had considered Jasper's suggestion, "do you really believe that this is the end of humanity?" "I don't know," he said. "I have changed my mind half a dozen times in the last few days. There may be a race untouched somewhere--in the archipelagos of the South Seas, perhaps--which will gradually develop and repeople the world again." "Or in Australia, or New Zealand," she prompted. "We should have heard from them before this," he said. "We must have heard before this." "And is there no hope for us, here in England, in Marlow? There are a few boys--infants born since the plague, you know--and there will be more children in the future--Evans's children and those others. There were two men in some places, you remember." "Can they ever grow up? It seems to me that the women are dying. They've nothing to live for. It's only a year since the plague first came, and look at them now. What will they be like in five years' time? They'll die of hopelessness, or commit suicide, or simply starve from the lack of any purpose in living, because work isn't worth while. And the others, the mothers, that have some object in living, will fall back into savagery. They'll be so occupied in the necessity for work, for forcing a living out of the ground somehow, that they'll have neither time nor wish to teach their children. I don't know, but it seems to me that we are faced with decrease, gradually leading on to extinction.