The Call of the Blood - Page 219/317

"I don't know. How do you mean?"

"As if you had something to tell me."

"Perhaps--perhaps I have," he answered.

He was on the verge, the very verge of confession. She put her arm

through his. When she touched him the impulse waned, but it did not die

utterly away.

"Tell it me," she said. "I love to hear everything you tell me. I don't

think you could ever tell me anything that I should not understand."

"Are you--are you sure?"

"I think so."

"But"--he suddenly remembered some words of hers that, till then, he had

forgotten--"but you had something to tell me."

"Yes."

"I want to hear it."

He could not speak yet. Perhaps presently he would be able to.

"Let us go up to the top of the mountain," she answered. "I feel as if we

could see the whole island from there. And up there we shall get all the

wind of the morning."

They turned towards the steep, bare slope and climbed it, while the sun

rose higher, as if attending them. At the summit there was a heap of

stones.

"Let us sit here," Hermione said. "We can see everything from here, all

the glories of the dawn."

"Yes."

He was so intensely preoccupied by the debate within him that he did not

remember that it was here, among these stones where they were sitting,

that he had hidden the fragments of Hermione's letter from Africa telling

him of her return on the day of the fair.

They sat down with their faces towards the sea. The air up here was

exquisitely cool. In the pellucid clearness of dawn the coast-line looked

enchanted, fairy-like and full of delicate mystery. And its fading, in

the far distance, was like a calling voice. Behind them the ranges of

mountains held a few filmy white clouds, like laces, about their rugged

peaks. The sea was a pale blue stillness, shot with soft grays and mauves

and pinks, and dotted here and there with black specks that were the

boats of fishermen.

Hermione sat with her hands clasped round her knees. Her face, browned by

the African sun, was intense with feeling.

"Yes," she said, at last, "I can tell you here."

She looked at the sea, the coast-line, then turned her head and gazed at

the mountains.

"We looked at them together," she continued--"that last evening before I

went away. Do you remember, Maurice?"