He ceased to speak, and carelessly, yet with obvious enjoyment, he sent forth another cloud of smoke into the crystal air of the morning.

He was not looking at Rufus.  It was abundantly evident that he had not realised how near to open violence the young fisherman had been.  His nonchalant explanation was plainly all-sufficing in his own opinion, and during the very marked silence that followed he displayed no faintest hint of anxiety or even interest as to the fashion of its reception.

The boat was rocking lightly on the swell; the sea all around was flooded with gold.  The great jagged outline of the Spear Point looked like the castle of a dream.  The haze of the newly risen sun had touched with magic all the world.  Knight’s eyes were half-closed.  He had the look of a man at peace with himself.

And Rufus relaxed.  The tension went out of his attitude; the volcanic fires died down.  For half a minute or more he sat absolutely passive.  Then slowly, with massive deliberation, he moved, unshipped the oars, and bent himself to pull.  In another ten seconds the boat was rushing through the water under the compulsion of his powerful strokes, heading straight for the boats of the fishing fleet that dotted the bay....

It must have been fully a quarter of an hour later that Knight, having finished his cigarette, came out of his reverie.

“And so, you see,” he remarked in the tone of one pleasantly rounding off a conversation, “until my picture is painted I remain the slave of my dream.  I wonder if I have succeeded at all in making myself intelligible.”

His eyes opened lazily and met Rufus’s sombre gaze; they held a laughing challenge, the easy challenge of the practised fencer who condescends to try a bout with ignorance.

Stolidly Rufus met the look.  If he realised the challenge he did not accept it.  He had barred himself in once more behind an impenetrable wall of unresponsiveness.  His gaze was once more obscure and bovine.  All hint of violence was gone from his bearing.  Only solid force remained—­the force that drove the boat strongly, unerringly, through the golden-crested waves.

“If you’re going to do a picture of Columbine,” he said slowly, “I hope it’ll be a good one.”

“It will probably be—­great,” said Knight, and flicked some ash from his sleeve with the complacent air of a man who has accomplished his purpose.

CHAPTER VI

THE MIDSUMMER MOON

It was very late that night, just as the first long rays of a full moon streamed across a dreaming sea, that the door that led out of the conservatory at The Ship softly opened, and a slim figure, clad in a long, dark garment, flitted forth.  Neither to right nor left did it glance, but, closing the door without sound, slipped out over the grass almost as if it moved on wings, and so down to the beach-path that wound steeply to the shore.