But the salt wind was in his face; it quieted him. He began to notice the many small intruding influences of approaching night. The bough of a resinous hemlock, soughing gently, touched his arm, and his hold on the shingles relaxed. He moved, to rest the injured hand on the casing, and its throbbing eased. His glance singled out clumps of changing maple or dogwood that flamed like small fires on the slope. Then he caught the rhythm of the tide, breaking far down along the rocky bulkhead; and above, where a footbridge spanned a chasm, a cascade rippled in harmony. "Nice, isn't it?" said the lieutenant, who came onto the porch with Elizabeth. "That is a pergola they are building down there," she explained. "It's to be covered with Virginia creeper and wistaria and all sorts of climbing things. And French doors open into it from the dining-room. A walk winds up from the end--you see it, Mr. Tisdale?--across the footbridge to a pavilion on the point. It is almost too dark to see the roof among the trees. Mrs. Weatherbee calls it the observatory, because we have such a long sweep of the Sound from there, north and south. You'd think you were aboard a ship at sea, lieutenant, in stormy weather. It gets every wind that blows." The lieutenant wished to go to the pavilion, but Tisdale excused himself from joining them, and was left alone again with his thoughts. Then he was conscious the other women had remained in the apartment. They had come into the inner room, and Mrs. Feversham, having found an electric button, flooded the interior with light. On the balcony a blue bulb glowed. Tisdale turned a little more and, leaning on the casement, waited for them to come through the open door. "What do you say to furnishing this suite in bird's-eye maple?" asked Marcia. "With rugs and portieres in old blue." Mrs. Weatherbee shaded her dazzled eyes with her hand and looked critically around. "The maple would be lovely," she said, "but--do you know," and she turned to her companion with an engaging smile, "these sunrise rooms seem meant for Alaska cedar? And the rugs should be not old blue, but a soft, mossy blue-green." Mrs. Feversham laughed. "Home industry again! We don't go to New York for Alaska cedar. But you are right; that pale yellow wood would be simply charming with these primrose walls, and it takes a wonderful polish. That leaves me only the rugs and hangings." She turned to go back through the wide doorway, then stopped to say: "After all, Beatriz, why not see what is to be had in Seattle? I had rather you selected everything for this suite, since it is to be yours."