"No. ... I am not indifferent. I like what you said to me. It seems unreal, though--but enchanting--part of this day's enchantment. ... Shall we start, Kay?"
"Certainly."
They went out together through the garden door into the open moor, swinging along in rhythmic stride, side by side, smiling faintly as dreamers smile when something imperceptible to the waking world invades their vision.
Again the brown grouse whirred from the whinns; again the subtle fragrance of the moor sweetened her throat with its clean aroma; again the haunting complaint of the lapwings came across acres of bog and furze; and, high in the afternoon sky, an invisible curlew sadly and monotonously repeated its name through the vast blue vault of space.
On the edge of evening with all the west ablaze they came out once more on Isla Water and looked across the glimmering flood at the old house in the hollow, every distant window-pane a-glitter.
Like that immemorial and dragon-guarded jewel of the East the sun, cradled in flaky gold, hung a hand's breadth above the horizon, and all the world had turned to a hazy plum-bloom tint threaded with pale fire.
On Isla Water the yellow trout had not yet begun to jump; evening still lingered beyond the world's curved ruin; but the wild duck were coming in from the sea in twos and threes and sheering down into distant reaches of Isla Water.
Then, into the divine stillness of the universe came the unspeakable twang of a banjo; and a fat voice, slightly hoarse: "Rocks on the mountain, Fishes in the sea, A red-headed girl Raised hell with me. She come from Chicago, R.F.D. An' she ain't done a thing to a guy like me!"
The business was so grotesquely outrageous, so utterly and disgustingly hopeless in its surprise and untimelines, that McKay's sharp laugh rang out under the sky.
There they were, the same trespassers of the morning, squatted on the heather at the base of Isla Craig--a vast heap of rocks--their machine drawn up in the tall green brakes beside the road.
The flashy, fat man, Macniff, had the banjo. The girl sat between him and the thin man, Skelton.
"Ah, there, old scout!" called out Macniff, flourishing one hand toward McKay. "Lovely evening, ain't it? Won't you and the wife join us?"
There was absolutely nothing to reply to such an invitation. Miss Erith continued to gaze out steadily across Isla Water; McKay, deeply sensitive to the ludicrous, smiled under the grotesque provocation, his eyes mischievously fixed on Miss Erith. After a long while: "They've spoiled it," she said lightly. "Shall we go on, Kay? I can't endure that banjo."