“By jingo!” said I, “I’m nervous; my liver must be in a devil of a condition if I see such things when I’m awake!  Lys will know what to give me.”

I felt mortified and irritated and sulky, and thought disgustedly of Le Bihan and Max Fortin.

But after a while I ceased speculating, dismissed the mayor, the chemist, and the skull from my mind, and smoked pensively, watching the sun low dipping in the western ocean.  As the twilight fell for a moment over ocean and moorland, a wistful, restless happiness filled my heart, the happiness that all men know—­all men who have loved.

Slowly the purple mist crept out over the sea; the cliffs darkened; the forest was shrouded.

Suddenly the sky above burned with the afterglow, and the world was alight again.

Cloud after cloud caught the rose dye; the cliffs were tinted with it; moor and pasture, heather and forest burned and pulsated with the gentle flush.  I saw the gulls turning and tossing above the sand bar, their snowy wings tipped with pink; I saw the sea swallows sheering the surface of the still river, stained to its placid depths with warm reflections of the clouds.  The twitter of drowsy hedge birds broke out in the stillness; a salmon rolled its shining side above tidewater.

The interminable monotone of the ocean intensified the silence.  I sat motionless, holding my breath as one who listens to the first low rumor of an organ.  All at once the pure whistle of a nightingale cut the silence, and the first moonbeam silvered the wastes of mist-hung waters.

I raised my head.

Lys stood before me in the garden.

When we had kissed each other, we linked arms and moved up and down the gravel walks, watching the moonbeams sparkle on the sand bar as the tide ebbed and ebbed.  The broad beds of white pinks about us were atremble with hovering white moths; the October roses hung all abloom, perfuming the salt wind.

“Sweetheart,” I said, “where is Yvonne?  Has she promised to spend Christmas with us?”

“Yes, Dick; she drove me down from Plougat this afternoon.  She sent her love to you.  I am not jealous.  What did you shoot?”

“A hare and four partridges.  They are in the gun room.  I told Catherine not to touch them until you had seen them.”

Now I suppose I knew that Lys could not be particularly enthusiastic over game or guns; but she pretended she was, and always scornfully denied that it was for my sake and not for the pure love of sport.  So she dragged me off to inspect the rather meager game bag, and she paid me pretty compliments, and gave a little cry of delight and pity as I lifted the enormous hare out of the sack by his ears.

“He’ll eat no more of our lettuce,” I said attempting to justify the assassination.

“Unhappy little bunny—­and what a beauty!  O Dick, you are a splendid shot, are you not?”

I evaded the question and hauled out a partridge.