he luminous mist, and then it
rolled over them, swiftly, silently, and wiped them out, and I
stumbled from the rock-seat and ran back across the beach, a great
lump stiffening my throat and a hard, frightened jealousy nearly
stifling me, to my shame and surprise.

For I had known Roger twenty-five years and yet I had never had the
least idea of the man!

PART THREE

IN WHICH THE STREAM JOINS WITH OTHERS
AND PLUNGES DOWN A CLIFF

He's left his flocks, his fields, his kine,
He's left his folk and friends and all,
He's off to watch the cold sea shine,
To brew for aye the salt sea brine,
The mermaid hath Sir Hugh in thrall.

_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._

CHAPTER IX

MARGARITA MEETS THE ENEMY AND HE IS HERS

I flung myself down on the beach behind a big rock, so that I was
completely cut off from the cottage, and stared at the sun rising,
though it might as well have been the moon for all my appreciation of
it. So this was it! No wonder he wanted a parson--it was high time, I
thought virtuously. It cut me that he had never hinted this to me;
that we, who had had no secrets from each other for so many years (as
I thought) had really been divided by this, for what I inferred had
been a long time. And yet a moment's consideration brought home to me
the almost certainty that it couldn't have been so very long, after
all. There had been, especially in the last year, weeks and even
months when Roger and I had not been separated for eight hours at a
stretch. He chose to work hard in the typical American fashion; I was
obliged to. And I knew his attitude toward the sort of _liaison_ we
both despised. He had laboured enough and disgustedly enough at
dragging a weak-kneed cousin of his (the black sheep that few large
families dispense with) out of a connection of that kind. And anyhow,
I knew that people who wore when they were together the look I had
seen on those two visions of the mist could never be contented apart!

Well, well, it was a bad quarter of an hour for me, and I had to get
over it as best I could, alone. Women are usually credited with a
practical monopoly of jealousy of their own sex, but wrongly, I am
sure. We learn earlier to conceal it and, better still, realise the
necessity for keeping quiet about it and getting over it. The clock
continues to strike, and one's friends continue to marry, and one
continues to present silver mugs to one's god-children--_voila t