She ran back to the edge of the platform, and flinging her arms again about the boulder, pressed her cheek against its gritty irresponsive surface. It was like a reconciliation! There had been a quarrel, and now there was no quarrel; none! She and Murdough; she and Murdough; always, always, _always_ she and Murdough. The warm dark night about her, the scarcely audible note of the sea upon the rocks below, the stars blinking sleepily overhead; they all seemed to be so many witnesses and assurances of that reconciliation. CHAPTER X Yet she did not after this seek him out, or try to make their relations closer in any way. On the contrary, it was a few days later that the first serious quarrel of their lives occurred. Murdough had not been near her for over a fortnight. She did not even know where he was, for he had got into the habit of being continually away on the mainland, no one knew where or for what. Late one afternoon, however, he came and beckoned mysteriously to her to come out on the platform and speak to him. He was evidently--for the moment, at all events--as sober as a judge. She went. There was a worn, dragged look about her face, due partly to watching, partly to anger, partly to the cross-fire at war within her. She was longing to quarrel fiercely with him; to have it all out; to rage and storm at him; to startle him, if she could, with her anger; and then--and then--to tell him that she loved him better than all the world besides; that she would do anything he liked; that she did not care how he behaved, not even how often he got drunk, if only he would not leave her always alone, if only he would care for her a little, a very little, more. The recollection of that evening in the boat still clung and clung to her very heart-strings. The sun was setting as she came out upon the platform; a warm wind swept round the rocks; the little tansies and saxifrages were all bathed in the dusky yellowish light. Murdough had something important to say, however, and, therefore, wasted no time in useless and quite unaccustomed preliminaries. ‘Then I would not have called you out, Grania, for I know you do not like to be called, and that is why I have kept away so much, so it is,’ he said, with his customary air of ingenuousness. ‘But to-day it is in a little bit of difficulty I am again, a little bit of trouble and difficulty, so it is to you I have come.’ She put her back against her old friend, the boulder, and waited to learn what she was to do. ‘It is just a little bit more of the money that I want you to give me, that is what it is; yes, indeed, nothing more,’ he went on, with the same air of ingenuousness, smoothing down his hair as he spoke. His eyes looked as clear that evening, the rascal, his whole aspect as fresh, vigorous, and wholesome as though he had never tasted anything stronger in his life than buttermilk.