“Would there not be anarchy?” he asked, hoping he had heard her correctly through the noise of the birds. “Look at what happened in France. First revolution, then chaos, then dictatorship.”

“The revolution was run by lawyers. Lawyers and journalists. Yes, and bad actors like Collot. We shall avoid them all. And we renounce violence. We despise it. Nothing good ever came of it.” She stopped by a break in the dunes, peered around herself. “Is this the way?” she asked. “I believe it is.”

They turned on to a soft path between the dunes and stepped out on to an expanse of painfully white sand.

“No weed-burning here,” said Lacroix.

“Not yet,” she said. “And there are other places more profitable. They cut the best weed from the rocks offshore. Here there are no rocks.”

It was true. The beach gave on to the sea and the sea to the horizon. An unbroken flow. They walked down and stood at the edge of the water. Here at last was a fluttering of air. They shut their eyes. It was what such distances demanded—to be taken in over the tongue, to have the intimacy of breath.

“You said,” she began, still looking or not looking at the sea, “left shoulders forward.”

“I did? When?”

“In your sleep. Last night.”

“It is a cavalry command. Left shoulders forward. We wheel to the right.”

“I thought it was,” she said. “I think that I have read it in a newspaper. Or a novel.”

“You like novels?”

“Not as much as Jane. And now if I want more than a page I have to ask them to read to me.”

“What else did I say?” he asked.

“You spoke of your sweetheart.”

They turned to look at each other.

“Sweetheart?”

“Lucy.”

“Lucy is my sister! She lives in Bristol. She is married to a man called William Swann. She has two children, twins, who I cannot tell apart from each other.”

“Then your sweetheart must have another name.”

“I suppose she must,” he said. He smiled at her. “You have not told me the name of your beau. If Jane has Thorpe, who do you have?”

“Perhaps I have Thorpe too,” she said. Or that is what he thought she said. He could not have heard it, of course. Thorpe too? What could that mean?

He said, “In the community presumably spiritual love counts for more. More than the other.”

“You may presume it,” she said, “but it was not spiritual love that got my sister with child last winter.”

“He came to the island?”

“Thorpe?” She shook her head.

“Where then?”

“What a strange question! And how interested you are in Thorpe and Jane.”

He denied it. She grinned at him.

“Jane took the boat to Oban. They were in a hotel there. I cannot tell you the number of the room.”