XX

In spite of the density of the atmosphere, the night was not entirely dark. The full moon somewhere above transformed the moving mist into a yellow-white murk, which glowed darker or lighter as the fog settled or rose. Weird though it was, the effect was quieting, like an escape into sleep. The hurrying shifting fog created a magical unreality, in which things near at hand—the veranda of Dune House, the markers indicating the driveway, the arbor of roses at the top of the stairs leading down the bluff—were remote, nonexistent, questionable. He knew where they were and that they were there; but could one be certain? Staring at them, fixing his gaze on where he knew them to be, he saw their shadowy outlines which, even while he traced them with his eye, vanished like the face in the moon the evening before. Was Ethel still waiting on the steps or had she gone up? He alone was the only certainty in the world, the one presence of which he could be sure. He started up the road.

Fine, so long as he kept away from the rose arbor and stairway, he told himself, remembering his encounter with the coast guardsman. The fellow had done his best to act tough, a match for his snarling dog, perhaps; but Grandin suspected the young man had probably been as uncomfortable with him—as surprised and thrown off—as he had been with the other. They had play-acted, automatically carrying out a stern little ritual which had been imposed upon them by the war.

He remembered how the macadam road ran for a couple of thousand feet past Dune House, then turned back into Sconset; but at the turn, another road of soft dirt continued straight along the diminishing bluff toward Tom Nevershead. He took this direction now, to walk as far as the turn.

The silly quarrel had been no more serious than the family fights which are the very life of the comic strips. It was hardly to be taken seriously; it had happened before and would doubtless happen many times again. What was serious, however, was what had happened to them since they had come to the island. What was very serious indeed was the need to discover why the holiday which they had both been counting on to bring them together again should, instead, have blasted them further apart than ever.—Yet he was still possessed by a raging anger. It was intolerable that Ethel should have taunted him about Cliff and the sun-tan oil—so exactly like a woman to attach such unreasonable and exaggerated importance to an episode which had no meaning whatever.