not make out
his groups of guillemots, although he heard them calling all around.
They had come out too late, indeed, for any such purpose.

Thither on those beautiful evenings, after his day's work was over,
Lavender was accustomed to come, either by himself or with his
present companion. Johnny Eyre did not intrude on his solitude: he was
invariably too eager to get a shot, his chief delight being to get to
the bow, to let the boat drift for a while silently through the waves,
so that she might come unawares on some flock of sea-birds. Lavender,
sitting in the stern with the tiller in his hand, was really alone in
this world of water and sky, with all the majesty of the night and the
stars around him.

And on these occasions he used to sit and dream of the beautiful time
long ago in Loch Roag, when nights such as these used to come over the
Atlantic, and find Sheila and himself sailing on the peaceful waters,
or seated high up on the rocks listening to the murmur of the tide.
Here was the same strange silence, the same solemn and pale light in
the sky, the same mystery of the moving plain all around them that
seemed somehow to be alive, and yet voiceless and sad. Many a time his
heart became so full of recollections that he had almost called aloud
"Sheila! Sheila!" and waited for the sea and the sky to answer him
with the sound of her voice. In these bygone days he had pleased
himself with the fancy that the girl was somehow the product of all
the beautiful aspects of Nature around her. It was the sea that was in
her eyes, it was the fair sunlight that shone in her face, the breath
of her life was the breath of the moorland winds. He had written
verses about this fancy of hers; and he had conveyed them secretly to
her, sure that she, at least, would find no defects in them. And many
a time, far away from Loch Roag and from Sheila, lines of this conceit
would wander through his brain, set to the saddest of all music,
the music of irreparable loss. What did they say to him, now that
he recalled them like some half-forgotten voice out of the strange
past?--

For she and the clouds and the breezes were one.
And the hills and the sea had conspired with the sun
To charm and bewilder all men with the grace
They combined and conferred on her wonderful face.

The sea lapped around the boat, the green light on the waves grew
somehow less intense; in the silence the first of the stars came out,
and somehow the time