“It is beautiful indeed!” he answered, but he looked, not at the sunset, but at the woman’s face before him, glowing like a saint’s in its golden aureole.  For this also was most beautiful—­so beautiful that it stirred him strangely.

“It is like——­” she began, and broke off suddenly.

“What is it like?” he asked.

“It is like finding truth at last,” she answered, speaking as much to herself as to him.  “Why, one might make an allegory out of it.  We wander in mist and darkness shaping a vague course for home.  And then suddenly the mists are blown away, glory fills the air, and there is no more doubt, only before us is a splendour making all things clear and lighting us over a deathless sea.  It sounds rather too grand,” she added, with a charming little laugh; “but there is something in it somewhere, if only I could express myself.  Oh, look!”

As she spoke a heavy storm-cloud rolled over the vanishing rim of the sun.  For a moment the light struggled with the eclipsing cloud, turning its dull edge to the hue of copper, but the cloud was too strong and the light vanished, leaving the sea in darkness.

“Well,” he said, “your allegory would have a dismal end if you worked it out.  It is getting as dark as pitch, and there’s a good deal in that, if only I could express myself.”

Beatrice dropped poetry, and came down to facts in a way that was very commendable.

“There is a squall coming up, Mr. Bingham,” she said; “you must paddle as hard as you can.  I do not think we are more than two miles from Bryngelly, and if we are lucky we may get there before the weather breaks.”

“Yes, if we are lucky,” he said grimly, as he bent himself to the work.  “But the question is where to paddle to—­it’s so dark.  Had not we better run for the shore?”

“We are in the middle of the bay now,” she answered, “and almost as far from the nearest land as we are from Bryngelly, besides it is all rocks.  No, you must go straight on.  You will see the Poise light beyond Coed presently.  You know Coed is four miles on the other side of Bryngelly, so when you see it head to the left.”

He obeyed her, and they neither of them spoke any more for some time.  Indeed the rising wind made conversation difficult, and so far as Geoffrey was concerned he had little breath left to spare for words.  He was a strong man, but the unaccustomed labour was beginning to tell on him, and his hands were blistering.  For ten minutes or so he paddled on through a darkness which was now almost total, wondering where on earth he was wending, for it was quite impossible to see.  For all he knew to the contrary, he might be circling round and round.  He had only one thing to direct him, the sweep of the continually rising wind and the wash of the gathering waves.  So long as these struck the canoe, which now began to roll ominously, on the starboard side, he must, he thought, be keeping a right course.  But in the turmoil of the rising gale and the confusion of the night, this was no very satisfactory guide.  At length, however, a broad and brilliant flash sprung out across the sea, almost straight ahead of him.  It was the Poise light.