er, her eyes, that
she tried to shield from him, her neck, her lips. It was an amazing
moment in the darkness.

Then she stopped crying and began to laugh unnaturally. In this way
she blurted out the story of her fright, and he, still clasping her,
listened until she was calm.

"But what are you doing here? How did it all happen?" she said. She
did not know what she was saying for happiness.

Little by little he told her. The _Pennant_ had put in to Devonport
for repairs a week before. He had been granted a month's leave, and
his first thought had been Roscarna. After a couple of days at his own
home he had crossed to Ireland, arriving late in the afternoon at
Oughterard, where he found a room at an hotel. In Dublin he had armed
himself with an Ordnance map, and looking at this, it had seemed to him
that it would be easy enough to walk to Roscarna in the evening and let
her know that he had arrived. Time was so short that he could not bear
to miss a moment of her. So he had set out from Oughterard along the
road to Clonderriff, hoping to reach Roscarna in daylight and to return
with the rising moon. He had reckoned without Irish miles and Irish
roads, and forgotten that a sailor who has been long afloat is out of
walking trim. He had made poor progress, and nothing but the distant
light of the cabin on the top of the hill in which the wake was being
held had prevented him from giving up his attempt to see her. And then
this astounding miracle had happened, and he had found her crying in
his arms ... surely a lover's luck!

"And now you'll be coming with me to Roscarna," she said.

She was so happy. She passed the cabin of the wake without a shudder.
They walked as lovers, arm in arm, and soon a yellow moon, in its third
quarter, rose, making Clonderriff beautiful, and flinging their moving
shadows upon the pale stones at the roadside. As they breasted the
hill, an arm of Corrib burned above the black like a band of sunset
cloud, rather than moonlit water. Its beauty overwhelmed them. They
clung to each other and kissed again. He told her that she was just as
he had seen her first in her white dress, just as he had always
imagined her in his days at sea, only more beautiful. She was so pale
in the moonlight, and her lips so happy. She was glad that an inspired
caprice had made her put on her white dress.

He asked her whether it was very far to Roscarna. "If you could miss
the way," he said, "