quiet thinking under the gigantic stars.... A plot of land
he had wanted then, and now he had the stars, they belonging more to him
than to the astrologers who conned them, the fields, more than to the
tillers who cultivated them, the sea than to the fishermen who
trawled.... He was one with everything, understanding everything, its
immense harmony.... From hard earth and wet sea he had arisen on swift,
dark pinions until he had been one with the spirit that infused all
earth and sea and sky holding the multitudinous atoms in One with
immense will and scheme.... And it was she who had given them to
him--Claire-Anne ... the wings of the morning.... The flutter of her
white hands ... the eyes that looked and drooped, looked, drooped ...
the little catch in her breath....

His life opened before him now, like a fair seaway. About his appointed
tasks he would go in his appointed life ... sailing ships with needed
cargoes ... a despatch messenger for the peoples of the world over the
vast solitudes of sea ... doing his work well and willingly ... and
asking no reward but that the bird of dusk, the mouth of honey, be his
to love and be loved by ... to melt with and be one in occult alchemy of
soul and mind and body ... to get strength and knowledge, and the
understanding which is more than strength and knowledge....

He was twenty-eight, she was twenty-five. There were twenty years before
them still, twenty years of love and understanding, and then a strange
happy twilight, like the dusk of Antrim, that gives way hardly to the
short night.... Some day she would marry him and come to his house ...
some day when something that was wrong in her heart was righted and
forgotten, something he had no wish to intrude upon, so closely did she
conceal it.... There was a locked, haunted room in her heart ... poor
heart!... but one day the presence would be exercised, and the room
swept and garnished.... Some day she would marry him, and he would bring
her home to Ulster.... And who better than she could understand the
springy heather and the blue smoke-reek, the crickets of the evening
and the curlew's call? And in the house where his mother was cold and
arrogant, would be a warm and gracious lady ... Claire-Anne!...

God! he was thinking long to be in Marseilles again, to go up the dusky
path, to call, "Claire-Anne!"

The big Belfast mate larruped down the short companionway.

"How's she doing, Mr. McKinstry?"

"She's doing fine,