“Ahhh!” breathed out the clergyman after supper, with an indescribable gesture of satisfaction and relief.  “Here there is freedom, and room for body and mind to turn in.  Here one can work and rest and play.  Here one can be alive and absorb something of the earth-forces that never get within touching distance in the cities.  By George, I shall make a permanent camp here and come when it is time to die!”

The good man was merely giving vent to his delight at being under canvas.  He said the same thing every year, and he said it often.  But it more or less expressed the superficial feelings of us all.  And when, a little later, he turned to compliment his wife on the fried potatoes, and discovered that she was snoring, with her back against a tree, he grunted with content at the sight and put a ground-sheet over her feet, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for her to fall asleep after dinner, and then moved back to his own corner, smoking his pipe with great satisfaction.

And I, smoking mine too, lay and fought against the most delicious sleep imaginable, while my eyes wandered from the fire to the stars peeping through the branches, and then back again to the group about me.  The Rev. Timothy soon let his pipe go out, and succumbed as his wife had done, for he had worked hard and eaten well.  Sangree, also smoking, leaned against a tree with his gaze fixed on the girl, a depth of yearning in his face that he could not hide, and that really distressed me for him.  And Joan herself, with wide staring eyes, alert, full of the new forces of the place, evidently keyed up by the magic of finding herself among all the things her soul recognised as “home,” sat rigid by the fire, her thoughts roaming through the spaces, the blood stirring about her heart.  She was as unconscious of the Canadian’s gaze as she was that her parents both slept.  She looked to me more like a tree, or something that had grown out of the island, than a living girl of the century; and when I spoke across to her in a whisper and suggested a tour of investigation, she started and looked up at me as though she heard a voice in her dreams.

Sangree leaped up and joined us, and without waking the others we three went over the ridge of the island and made our way down to the shore behind.  The water lay like a lake before us still coloured by the sunset.  The air was keen and scented, wafting the smell of the wooded islands that hung about us in the darkening air.  Very small waves tumbled softly on the sand.  The sea was sown with stars, and everywhere breathed and pulsed the beauty of the northern summer night.  I confess I speedily lost consciousness of the human presences beside me, and I have little doubt Joan did too.  Only Sangree felt otherwise, I suppose, for presently we heard him sighing; and I can well imagine that he absorbed the whole wonder and passion of the scene into his aching heart, to swell the pain there that was more searching even than the pain at the sight of such matchless and incomprehensible beauty.