"Give the wind time," he replied, with a glance across the bay and a big indrawn breath of complete satisfaction; "we've the whole day before us." "We haven't the whole channel, though," she said, nodding to starboard, where a black fin of rock cut suddenly in the clear water a little whispering ring of foam. "Phew!" exclaimed the man, screwing round on the gunwale as the black fin disappeared. "Many like that?" "Plenty, plenty!" laughed the girl. "Are you going to row?" He shook his head. Then, with an effect of having completely forgotten her, stared eagerly across that wavering jewel of water at the rose and silver of the beach, and down through the transparent purple depths beneath him at the sand and the rocks and the waving yellow weed. She watched his face brighten with their beauty, as though somehow he had absorbed it, and his grave good looks take on a boyish lightness, as his eyes turned from colour to colour, or followed the sea-fern streaming in the pulse of the tide. Leaning forward with a smile she laid her hand on the cleat in front of her and let the halyard go. The brown sail ran down till the parrel jammed, and Maurice Caragh faced round reproachfully. "Why don't you want to row?" she cried. "It isn't a hundred yards." "No, I know," he sighed, as he freed the clip of the traveller and gathered in the bunt; "but a sail looks so much more adventurous." "Even in a calm?" she smiled. "Oh, yes, most in a calm," he replied, seating himself disconsolately on the thwart in front of her, and slowly pushing out a sweep. "Adventure's nothing with a full sail, but all the fear of the sea is in the flat one. Look here!" he continued, without change of tone, "the rowlocks are gone." She thrust out the point of a little white shoe at the place where they lay beneath his thwart, and he pushed them resignedly into their chocks, and pulled for the shore; Lettice Nevern standing up with her finger tips on the tiller behind her, and her eye intent upon the channel. Her quick emphatic directions amused the man who was rowing, as the boat wound through the invisible maze. "Goodness!" he exclaimed, backing hard with his left, "I shouldn't care to bring a boat in here with a bit of wind." "You couldn't," she replied, "with any wind but what we've got. That's what I like about it. There are not ten days in the year you can dare to land here. But this half tide is the worst; it's easier with less or more water." "Do you ever come here by yourself?" he asked, resting on the oars. "I've always come by myself," she answered, looking down into his face, "that's why"--she hesitated for a moment--"that's why I didn't bring you before." The reason might not have seemed explicit to another, but it carried a sense of privilege to Caragh's mind that troubled the look with which he acknowledged it. "I hope I mayn't prove unworthy of it," he said gravely.