...  The air had been very still, as though asleep like all things else except the sea.  And the sea still lay like lead out there, but I began to catch the gleam of white teeth along the sides of Brecqhou, and down below in Havre Gosselin I could hear the long waves growling among the rocks.  And now there came a stir in the air like the waking breaths of a sleeper.  The shadows behind Herm and Jethou thickened and darkened.  The little throb of life behind the banks of cloud in the east quickened and grew.  The sky there looked thin and bright and empty, as if it had been swept bare and cleansed for that which was to come.  Up above me soft little gray clouds showed suddenly, all touched with pink on their eastern sides, while the sky behind them warmed with a faint dun glow.  A cock in the Beaumanoir yard woke suddenly and crowed, and the challenge was answered from La Vauroque.  Jeanne Falla’s pigs grunted sleepily at the disturbance.  The pigeons rumbled in their cote, and the birds began to twitter in the trees about the house.  And behind the white curtains there, Carette lay sleeping.

...  I had asked her, the first chance that offered, after I got back from seeing George Hamon.  We were spinning round in a double quickstep which tried even Uncle Nico’s seasoned arm.

“Carette,” I whispered into the little pink shell of an ear, so near my lips that it was hard to keep from kissing it, “will you ride with me to-morrow?” and my heart went faster than my feet and set me tumbling over them.  For Midsummer Day is Riding Day in Sercq, and he who asks a maid to share his horse that day is understood to desire her company on a longer journey still, and her consent to the one is generally taken to mean that she agrees to the other as well.  So my little question held a mighty meaning, and no wonder my heart went quicker than my feet and set me stumbling over them as I waited for her answer.

“Not to-morrow, Phil,” she whispered, and my heart stood still.  Then it went on its way like a wave out of the west, when she murmured, “It’s to-day we ride, not to-morrow,” meaning that we had danced the night out.

“Then you will, Carette?  You will?”

“You’re late in the day, you know,” she said, teasing still, as maids will when they know a man’s heart is under their feet.

“But I only got home this evening—­”

“Monsieur Torode asked me hours ago.”

“But you haven’t promised him, Carette?” and I felt as though all my life depended on her answer.

“I said I’d see.  But—­”

“Then you’ll come with me, Carette,” and I felt like kissing her there before them all.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do, Phil.  I’ll go with one of you and come back with the other.”

“But—­Carette!—­”

“You should not have left it so late, you see.”

And with that I had to be content, though it was not at all to my mind, since I had looked for more.