"Yes, I shall have to get off by eleven. I've not been home, you see. Couldn't stand going back to that place, so I just made myself comfortable by the hut there.--I say, I hope you didn't get wet with that rain in the night?" Simply, freely, naturally, and without a second thought, he put out his hand to feel whether her petticoat was dry. He supposed she slept in her petticoat, and that his early visit had not allowed her time to change. But she crouched back so swiftly that he also fell a little back, surprised. He forgot that his own words, "I'm a bit early," raised twenty questions--questions of why he was there at all, of how it had come to pass that a variation in his habit was a thing to be remarked on, of why his announcement that he must be off early seemed even to himself a breach of something that had never been established, but only tacitly allowed. He forgot these things, stared at her, and suddenly exclaimed, "Why, what's the matter?" Had she feared that he was about to put his hand upon her? One of her elbows had shot up as if she would have defended herself, and the frightened seaweed eyes looked at him over the guarding forearm. Her other hand, behind her on the grass, supported her. So they sat, she trembling, he covering her with an astonished stare. Then, as quickly as she had raised it, she dropped the defending arm. She made a swift clutch at her petticoats and scrambled a foot farther away from him. Her breast fluttered like that of the still living trout, and her hand was clasped betrayingly about one foot hidden in the short striped petticoat. And in a twink John Willie saw his mistake. It was not from his advanced hand that she had shrunk. It was from the resting of his eyes--those eyes that, even as she had drawn herself back, had already rested. Those eyes, of Scandinavian blue, had sought hers again, of the wet greenish brown of the seaweed of the shore. He spoke quietly. "Come here, Ynys," he said. She did not move. "Come here, Ynys," he said again. Her trembling became violent. "Come here, Ynys--I want----" He did not finish. His hand shot quickly forth. The next moment it held what she had striven to hide. He was gazing at the silver mark that ran round the outer edge of her foot near the little toe as a vein runs round a pebble.