xtended to the calling monster, whose voice filled their ears,
and seemed to be summoning them persistently, with an almost tragic
arrogance, away from all they knew, from all that was trying to hold
and keep them, to the unknown, to the big things that lie always far off
over the edge of the horizon.

"Let us turn our backs on Rye!" said the girl.

They swung round with the wind behind them, and walked on easily side by
side, helped by the firm and delicate floor under their feet.

She was wearing a wine-coloured "jumper," a short skirt of a rough
heathery material, a small brown hat pinned low on her head, pressed
down on her smooth forehead. Her cheeks were glowing. The wind sent the
red to them. She stepped along with a free, strongly athletic movement.
There was a hint of the Amazon in her. On her white neck some wisps
of light yellow hair, loosened by the wind's fingers, quivered as if
separately alive and wilful with energy.

Craven, striding along in knickerbockers beside her, felt the animal
charm of her as he had never felt it in London. She had thrust her
gloves away in some hidden pocket. Her right hand grasped a stick
firmly. The white showed at the knuckles. He felt through her silence
that she was giving herself heart and soul to the spirit of the place,
to the sweeping touch of the wind, to the eternal sound in the voice of
the sea.

They walked on for a long time into the far away. There was a dull lemon
light over the sea pushing through the grey, hinting at sunset. A
flock of gulls tripped jauntily on some wet sand near to them, in
which radiance from the sky was mysteriously retained. A film of moving
moisture from the sea spread from the nearest surf edge, herald of the
turning tide. Miss Van Tuyn raised her arms, shook them, cried out with
all her force. And the gulls rose, easily, strongly, and flew insolently
towards their element.

"Let us turn!" she said.

"All right!"

Those were the first words they had spoken.

"Let us go and sit down in a sand-bank and see the twilight come."

"Yes."

They sat down presently among the spear-like blades of the spiky grass,
facing the tides and the evening sky, and Craven, with some difficulty,
lit his pipe and persuaded it to draw, while she looked at his
long-fingered brown hands.

"I couldn't sit here with some people I know," she said. "Desolation
like this needs the right companion. Isn't it odd how some people are
only for certain places