breeze that wailed about the bushes with a vague threat of rain. Clouds crept up from the west and blotted out the moon and uncovered it again as they drifted on. She felt extraordinarily free and happy.
When she got to the top of the ravine she dropped down upon the edge of it between bits of stunted ti-tree. Down below her she could see the moon whitening the line of surf.
The breeze was fresh here and the sea was rising. She was lost in a rambling wonder at the miracle of space above her when she heard steps on the road. In her dark dress she was almost invisible in the shadow, and could have stayed unobserved, but instinctively she jumped to her feet, and startled a man who stopped suddenly not more than a yard away from her.
“What the devil—oh, I beg your pardon. Good Lord, Miss Carr, do you jump down from the stars in a parachute, or what?”
Valerie struggled against the instantaneous effect that Dane had on her. “I thought everybody had gone from here,” she said lamely, as if she had to account for her presence. And then she was vexed that she seemed to be apologizing for herself. It was so unlike her.
“The cottagers have gone, thank God. But I don’t regulate my life by them.”
“I should hope you didn’t,” she said with emphasis.
She saw now that he was stooping under the weight of a large knapsack strapped to his back. He held his smoking pipe in one hand and his snake stick in the other. His head was vividly black and white against the sheen of the moon, and the wind stirred in his soft hair.
As he saw her with the moon full upon her face he caught again that sense of abundant life he had got from her before, and a sense of bodily poise and pliancy from her easy limbs.
