“This,” said Billy, taking in a full breath of the sea-scented air of Porth Cariad, “is better than your old idea of a Riviera honeymoon, Nancy!”

We had just walked down from the larger of the cottages towards the shore, and were watching that great primrose-coloured Chinese lantern of a moon rise slowly, slowly over the jagged, purple silhouette of the Carnarvonshire mountains into the pale mauve September dusk.

Presently it would cast a glittering path of light across the Bay of Many Waters, and throw a black shadow from the cliff of the wooden woman on to the sands of our cove. There was a soft lap-lapping of the high tide beneath us, and a softer scurrying of rabbits among the sand-hills; now and again a gull called, or we caught the distant shouts of the men in the fishing-boats putting out for the night.

Beyond these small sounds there was a great and brooding Peace; we were two hundred miles and more from the noise and sunshine and merriment of the morning, from the great green lawn sown with all the colour and movement of the wedding-party, living confetti!—from the white house, echoing with laughter, and voices—Theo’s above the rest—calling far after us: “Good luck! Good luck!”

“And are you glad to be back here, with me, to-night?”

“To-morrow,” I said dreamily, “we’ll go everywhere where we used to go——”

“Over to that cliff, Nancy——”

“Yes, and finish painting that figure-head——”

“Yes, or not finish painting her. We’ve wasted too much good time at Port Sweetheart as it is!”

But I felt that all our time here had all been so lovely—all! And now, this cool white radiance was bathing the place in a light more magical than any day I had seen. It made of it one of those dream-countries one walks in, half-waking, as a child: a wide and lonely, lovely land; secret, too! of which one would not give the entrance to one’s very dearest; a land I had scarcely dreamed of since I was a half-grown girl. Why did those dreams come back to me now? I stared out to sea; I didn’t want to move or speak; just to be there, watching that moonlight on those waves, was enough. I was as still as that image of that other girl, high up on the cliff....

At that moment I felt ... not myself at all, but outside myself and part of it all—of the quivering, whispering sea under that chill and silver light, of those fairy hills, of the sighing, cool air, and of the dewy earth. There was something of all these in my own being—something of mine in all of them. For that one moment I had forgotten the lover beside me; for just that last rapt moment he was nothing to me....

Then he spoke.

“The lights on the boats down there ... like glow-worms! Only those are putting out to sea. And a glow-worm lights up—did you know why? to guide its mate home.”

I sighed; slowly, slowly growing back again, out of the inhuman white glamour and that silver distance....

“Are there,” I asked, a little absently, “any glow-worms in this place?”

“Further inland, perhaps,” he said.

Very gently, he drew me round to face the cottages. A warmer, dimmer, rosier light streamed through the door of the kitchen, where we caught the pinky round globe of the lamp, the gleam of the white cloth, the small, dark, cosy shape of Mrs. Roberts moving to and fro, setting, with a little chinking of plates and forks, our supper.

She came to the door and called in her insidious voice, “Mae’n barod rwan, sir!”

“That means it’s ready now,” said Billy softly. “Come in, dear. Yes—those lights are outward-bound, Nancy. But you—you’re anchored, aren’t you? All fast?”

“Ah, but as I love to be,” I said, this time with a happy sigh; and turned—to his breast.

He clasped me, crushing against my neck a kiss that has left there, rosy and distinct, the impression of a chain....

It’s that slender gold chain which holds the little oval pendant framing a christening-curl. His mother fastened that gift beneath the white shimmer of my bridal-gown this morning.

And I remember something that she said when first she offered it.

Presently, I shall tell my husband what it was.

THE END

Printed at The Chapel River Press, Kingston, Surrey.