So, as the day drew down, they landed on Shuna to boil the kettle for tea with driftwood gathered from the shore, and wonder idly as the flames leapt up to shrivel the lowermost leaves of the rowan tree by the spring, whence the wreckage which burnt so bravely had come; for storm and stress seemed far from their world. Then, while the boatmen took their turn at the scones and cake, the jam and toast, they climbed the grassy slopes, and, sitting down by the old tower, watched the sunset idly; for all things, even pleasure, seem idle on such days as these. The clouds had pricked westwards, as if to aid the Atlantic in a coming storm, but below their heavy purple masses lay a strip of greeny gold sky, into which the sun was just sinking from a higher belt of crimson-tinted bars. "No Green Ray for us to-night," said Marjory, with a smile. Paul raised his eyebrows. "No Green Ray on this or any other night, in my candid opinion." The Reverend James looked puzzled. "I have often heard you mention this Green Ray, Miss Marjory, but I am not quite sure to what you allude." "To a fiction of Jules Verne's, that is all," put in Paul, quickly. "Nothing of the sort; people have seen it," corrected the girl, eagerly. "Say they have seen it," murmured Paul, obstinately, and Marjory frowned. "I will explain it to you, Mr. Gillespie," she went on, with assertion in her voice. "It is a green ray of light which shoots through the sea, just as the topmost curve of the sun touches the water. I watch for it often. I intend to watch for it till I see it, as others have done." "And what good will it do to you when you have seen it?" asked Paul. They were speaking to each other, despite the pretence of general conversation; but it was so often. "I haven't the least idea," she answered airily; "for all that, I look forward to seeing it as a great event in my life." "Great events are dangerous; like some very valuable medicines, uncertain in their effects. Birth, for instance--you may be born a fool or a wise man. Marriage--a chance of the die--so I'm told. Death." He pointed dramatically upwards and downwards with a whimsical look on his anxious, gracious face. "I deny it, I deny it altogether," cried the girl, forgetting herself and him in her eagerness. "You are either in existence before birth, or you are not. In the one case you must remain yourself, in the other you, being nonexistent, cannot suffer chance or change. It is the same with death. If there is no _you_ to survive, death itself ceases to be since you are non-existent. If there is, you must remain yourself." "Surely, my dear Miss Marjory," said the Reverend James, breaking in on the girl's half-questioning appeal, "we are to be changed in the twinkling of an eye?" "And marriage, Miss Carmichael?" put in Paul, quietly, passing by the last remark as if it, too, had been non-existent. "You left out marriage in your philosophy." Her face fell, yet softened.