"I deny it, I deny it altogether," cried the girl, forgetting herself and him in her eagerness. "You are either in existence before birth, or you are not. In the one case you must remain yourself, in the other you, being nonexistent, cannot suffer chance or change. It is the same with death. If there is no _you_ to survive, death itself ceases to be since you are non-existent. If there is, you must remain yourself."

"Surely, my dear Miss Marjory," said the Reverend James, breaking in on the girl's half-questioning appeal, "we are to be changed in the twinkling of an eye?"

"And marriage, Miss Carmichael?" put in Paul, quietly, pa.s.sing by the last remark as if it, too, had been non-existent. "You left out marriage in your philosophy."

Her face fell, yet softened.

"I do not know; it is like the Green Ray, something to dream about."

"To dream about! Ah! that sort of marriage is, I own, beyond the vision of ordinary humanity."

"But indeed there is nothing scientifically impossible in the Green Ray. You have only to get the angle of refraction equal to the----"

"Spare me, please. If I have to swallow romance I prefer it undisguised. Even as a boy I refused powders in jam."

"Wish I had," grumbled Will, knocking the ashes out of his pipe. "I have never been able to eat black-currant jelly in consequence. And it is awfully nice in itself. Come, Marjory, we ought to be going."

"It is very hard to get rid of acquired tastes," muttered Paul, in an undertone, as he rose, and quite familiarly held out his hand to help Marjory to her feet also. "For instance, it will be difficult to forget the flavour of the past fortnight."

"Why should you forget it?" They were standing apart from the others, who were looking eastward to see if the boatmen were ready.

"Because the pleasure of it has been demoralising."

"I don't believe in the demoralising effect of pleasure."

"Perhaps not. You are one of the virtuously const.i.tuted whose pleasure consists in behaving nicely. Mine doesn't."

Her hand went out in an impulsive gesture of denial.

"Why should you say that? You are not----"

"How can you know what I am?" he began bitterly, yet indifferently; his eyes, not upon her, but fixed far on the distant horizon, as if arraigning some unseen power which had made him what he was. Then he paused abruptly, and infinite surprise drove everything else from his face.

"Look!" he cried.

"Look?--what?--where?"

"Look!" His hand was on hers now, and its trembling touch seemed to give her sight.

It was a new heaven and a new earth! For, on the outermost edge of the world, the last beam of light from the sunken sun shot through the waves, flooding sky, and sea, and sh.o.r.e, with a green light, soft and pellucid as the heart of an emerald. But only for an instant. The next he had loosed her hand and the light was gone.

"What are you staring at so, Miss Carmichael?" His mocking tone jarred her through and through. She looked at him in sheer bewilderment.

"The--the Green Ray!"

"The Green Ray!" he echoed, in the same tones. "I say, Cameron! Here is your cousin declaring she has seen the Green Ray. Did you see anything?"

"Only the seal you were watching out on the rocks yonder," called Will. "Splendid shot, wasn't it?"

"The Green Ray!" echoed the Reverend James, bustling up. "Dear me, how interesting, and I missed it, somehow. What was it like, Miss Marjory?"

The girl stood with her clear, cold eyes fixed on Paul's face. "I scarcely know. You had better ask Captain Macleod. If I saw anything, he saw it also; and saw it first!"

"But you have such a much more vivid imagination than I," he replied easily, "that what would be to me merely an unusually beautiful effect, might be to you a miracle. It is simply a question of temperament, and mine is severely practical. In fact, Cameron, if we are to get home to-night, it's time we were going."

"By George!" said Will, when, with a general scramble, they had stowed everything on board, "it's later than I thought, the tide has turned, and the wind is almost down. We must take the sweeps, I am afraid."

"All right," said Paul. "Hand us over an oar."

He was a different man; the lazy content was gone, and he gave a stroke from a straight back which made Donald gasp between his efforts--"Gorsh me! but he is a fine rower, is the laird!"

But there was silence--the silence of hard work--for the most part, as they toiled home with wind and tide against them. Yet the scene was beautiful as ever in the growing moonlight.

"We are not more than a mile from the house here, Marjory," said Will, as they rounded a point below the Narrowest; "but it will take us a good hour to get her to the boat-house, and I can't leave her here; it's spring tides, and the painter's not long enough. But I'll land you on that rock, and the laird will see you home. Mother will be getting anxious."

"I would rather stay," she was beginning, when Paul cut her short.

"Back water, bow; pull, Donald. Luff her a bit. Miss Carmichael, please. That will do." They were alongside the little jetty of rock, and he was out. "Your hand, please, the seaweed is awfully slippery.

Donald, pa.s.s up those sh.e.l.ls, will you, they are in my handkerchief.

All right, Cameron. Give way."

It had all pa.s.sed so quickly, and this masterful activity of Paul's was so surprising, that Marjory, rather to her own surprise, found herself following close on his heels as he forced a way for her through the dense thickets of bracken, or held back a briar from the path in silence. Yet the silence did not seem oppressive; it suited her own confusion, her own vague pleasure and pain. She had seen the Green Ray, but she had seen it through Paul Macleod's eyes. Yes; whether he would or not, they had seen it hand in hand. He might deny it, but the fact remained. He was one of those who could see it!

And Paul, as he walked on, felt that the silence intensified his clear pleasure and clearer pain. For there was no vagueness in _his_ emotions. It was not the first time that the touch of a woman's hand had thrilled him through and through, as Marjory's had done as they looked out over the sunset sea; but it was the first time that such a thrill had not moved him to look upon the woman's face! And they had stood still, hand in hand, like a couple of children, staring at the Green Ray! What a fool he had been! What did it mean save something at which he had always scoffed, at which he meant always to scoff! And then the Green Ray? Was his brain softening that he should see visions and dream dreams? He, Paul Macleod, who loved and forgot all, save his own physical comfort. As everyone did in the end. And yet it was a familiar pleasure to be in love again honestly, a pleasure to feel his heart beating, to know that the girl he fancied was there beside him in the moonlight, that he could tell her of his heart-beats if he chose. But he did not choose. Love of that sort came and went! Did he not know it? Did he not know his own nature, and was not that enough?

And yet, when they reached the high road a sudden desire to make her also understand it, made him say, abruptly:

"When do you begin work? In London, isn't it?"

"Yes; in November."

"And you are really going to waste life in a dull, dirty school, teaching vulgar little boys and girls."

"I shall teach them not to be vulgar."

He shrugged his shoulders. "You cannot fight against Nature, Miss Carmichael; as we are born, we remain. You will only kill yourself in your efforts at regeneration."

"I think not. I am very strong to begin with, and then I hate rusting in idleness."

"Rust may be better than tarnish. When I think of you here in this paradise--a fool's paradise, perhaps--and of what you must encounter there, it seems preposterous for you to mix yourself up. But you do not understand; you never will." He had forgotten his new outlook in the old resentment at her unconsciousness.

"Understand what? I can understand most things if I try."

"Can you? I doubt it. You cannot understand me, for instance, but that is beside the question. The only comfort is that real life will disgust you. Then you will return to the home you should never have left."

"I have no home--you know that."

"You can make one by marrying, as other girls do."