"I've always thought they were," he said.
"Men might think so."
He smiled: "Quite right, Yellow-hair; woman only is competent to size up woman. The trouble is that no man really believes this."
"Don't you?"
"I don't know. Tell me, what shall we do after luncheon?"
"Oh, the moors--please, Kay!"
"What!" he exclaimed laughingly; "you're already a victim to Glenark moors!"
"Kay, I adore them! ... Are you tired? ... Our time is short-our day of sunshine. I want to drink in all of it I can ... before we--"
"Certainly. Shall we walk to Strathnaver, Lady Yellow-hair?"
"If it please my lord."
"Now?"
"In the cool of the afternoon. Don't you want to be lazy with me in your quaint old garden for an hour or two?"
"I'll send out two steamer-chairs, Yellow-hair."
When they lay there in the shadow of a lawn umbrella, chair beside chair, the view across Isla Water was unpolluted by the picnickers, their hamper, and their car.
"Stole away, the beggars," drawled McKay lighting a cigarette. "Where the devil they got a permit for petrol is beyond me."
The girl lay with deep golden eyes dreaming under her long dark lashes. Sunlight crinkled Isla Water; a merle came and sang to her in a pear-tree until, in its bubbling melody, she seemed to hear the liquid laughter of Isla rippling to the sea.
"Kay?"
"Yes, Yellow-hair." Their voices were vague and dreamy.
"Tell me something."
"I'll tell you something. When a McKay of Isla is near his end he is always warned."
"How?"
"A cold hand touches his hand in the dark."
"Kay!"
"It's so. It's called'the Cold Hand of Isla.' We are all doomed to feel it."
"Absurd!"
"Not at all. That's a pretty story; isn't it? Now what more shall I tell you?"
"Anything you like, Kay. I'm in paradise--or would be if only somebody would tell me stories till I fall asleep."
"Stories about what?"
"About YOU, Kay."
"I'll not talk about myself."
"Please!"
But he shook his head without smiling: "You know all there is," he said--"and much that is--unspeakable."
"Kay!"
"What?"
"Never, never speak that way again!"
He remained silent.
"Because," she continued in her low, pretty voice, "it is not true. I know about you only what I somehow seemed to divine the very moment I first laid eyes on you. Something within me seemed to say to me, 'This is a boy who also is a real man!' ... And it was true, Kay."
"You thought that when you knelt in the snow and looked down at that beastly drunken--"
"Yes! Don't use such words! You looked like a big schoolboy, asleep-that is what you resembled. But I knew you to be a real man."