of yours?" he
asked as, with glowing eyes and quickened breaths, she told him of the
twins born on Flodden Field and wrapt in their foemen's trappings. Had
he been less self-centred he could not have tried to hurt her by making
fun of her legends.

"Yes. She is my great, great, goodness knows how great grandmother. I'm
rather proud of her, but she takes some living up to. I often feel I
disappoint her. But if ever I feel flabby or lazy or tired of hard
things I switch my mind on to her. Fancy her, sick and weak, tramping
after her man to the battle, and then leaving him dead as she took his
heirs and his shattered pennant back to the ruins of his home. I feel
ashamed of myself for ever daring to think I'm ill-used when I think of
my spaewife grandmother! We're not brave and hard like that now--But I'd
rather like to get her here to settle you and people who talk about
'limiting' women. She wasn't much of a passenger."

"Oh, that witch story comes in lots of mythologies, and old family
histories!" he said, teasingly. "I don't suppose she ever existed at
all, really, or if she did it was because she'd been tarred and
feathered and took refuge at that out of the world show because she was
afraid of being burnt."

"Afraid!" she cried, and began to tingle all over just as she had
tingled when Mactavish played the pipes at her father's funeral. Just
for an instant she wanted to push Louis over the roof, hear him smash
far below on the street for daring to say the spaewife was afraid. Then,
just as swiftly, she remembered that he was weak and must not be annoyed
because he could not stand it. It came to her in a flash how impossible
it was for him, with no pride but self-love, no courage but Dutch
courage, to understand fearlessness and endurance. Her tingling smart of
madness and anger passed, leaving her penitent and pitying. She put her
arm round his neck and kissed him behind his ear. He, not knowing the
swift processes of her thought, imagined that he had "knocked a bit of
the silliness out of her" effectively.

"Poor little boy," she whispered, and he liked it.

The waters of the harbour began to deepen to indigo: the sun went down
behind the roofs of the city at their side. There was a faint faraway
crackling in the air as of straw and twigs burning in a fierce fire;
the sky was flooded with streamers of mauve and green, gold and rosy
light that flickered over the bed of the sinking sun for an hour or more
instea