The afternoon advanced and waned, twilight approached, and, by his complete absorption, he revealed to Rachel the toil, the cautious experiments, the days and nights of labour expended for such meagre, very meagre results. He became, all at once, in her imagination, a figure exalted and pathetic. But it was plain that the unsatisfactory test had consumed a portion of his existence. At last, with an abrupt gesture, he directed her to put back to the shore. The darkness had fallen and the waves wetted the beach indefatigably, the ocean murmured incomprehensibly, and from the heavens poured the imperturbable light of the stars. The stars threw their calm radiance over the figure that, silent and absorbed, leaped out of the boat and without a word made off around the rocks. A shadowy presence, which immediately disclosed itself as a boy, emerged from among the boulders and scowled after the retreating form. "The next time he's for rowing round in such crazy fashion, I'll take him." And with his strong arms, André helped Rachel beach the boat. She flung down the end of rope and faced him. "You'll do nothing of the sort," she cried; "you'll mind your business, do you understand?" These words, spit out upon him, made him open his eyes in astonishment, but before he could find speech, she likewise had disappeared in the gloom. CHAPTER IX THE OLD FASCINATION In spite of André's interference and her grandfather's mild questionings, in spite, even, of Nora Gage's curious and sly looks, Rachel continued to take Emil out in the boat every day. But on the fifth day when she went to the beach, he did not appear. For a time she waited in acute loneliness, then, with a magnificent effort, she returned to the house, deliberately donned her best dress, and, haughtily, under Nora's little inquisitive eyes, started for Old Harbour. Some powerful law of existence was at work driving her blindly forward to realize a distant idea in the face of the challenges of her maidenhood. She walked rapidly until she gained the main street of the little village. Then her steps flagged, and with her head turning idly from side to side, she noticed, as if for the first time, the names over the doors of the storm-beaten shops:--"Old Harbour Yacht Yard," "Ship Chandlery and Hardware," "Paint, Cordage and Boat Trimmings." In her dainty trappings, with the shadow from her hat in her eyes and folds of her crisp muslin dress in one sunburnt hand to keep it from the soil of the road, she might have been a stranger on a first stroll through the curious little town that smelled rankly of fish, instead of a maid born and bred in those parts. Finally she paused before a window where yellow oilskin coats were grotesquely displayed, together with lanterns and canvas pails and other objects of signal interest to one of her sex and age; and at that instant Emil, lounging in the door of the hotel opposite with a pipe planted between his lips, spied her.