wind blowing in their faces,
thrashing into little flecks of white foam the sea below, on which the
twilight was already resting. For a moment or two neither of them could
speak.

"I was thinking of my country," he confessed. "I was looking through the
shadows there, right across the North Sea."

"To Germany?"

He shook his head.

"Further away--to Sweden."

"I forgot," she murmured. "You looked as though you were posing for a
statue of some one in exile," she observed. "Come, let us go a little
lower down--unless you want to stay here and be blown to pieces."

"I was on my way back to the hotel," he answered quickly, as he followed
her lead, "but to tell you the truth I was feeling a little lonely."

"That," she declared, "is your own fault. I asked you to come to
Mainsail Haul whenever you felt inclined."

"As I have felt inclined ever since the evening I arrived," he remarked
with a smile, "you might, perhaps, by this time have had a little too
much of me."

"On the contrary," she told him, "I quite expected you yesterday
afternoon, to tell me how you like the place and what you have been
doing. So you were thinking about--over there?" she added, moving her
head seawards.

"Over there absorbs a great deal of one's thoughts," he confessed, "and
the rest of them have been playing me queer tricks."

"Well, I should like to hear about the first half," she insisted.

"Do you know," he replied, "there are times when even now this war seems
to me like an unreal thing, like something I have been reading about,
some wild imagining of Shelley or one of the unrestrainable poets. I
can't believe that millions of the flower of Germany's manhood and
yours have perished helplessly, hopelessly, cruelly. And France--poor
decimated France!"

"Well, Germany started the war, you know," she reminded him.

"Did she?" he answered. "I sometimes wonder. Even now I fancy, if the
official papers of every one of the nations lay side by side, with their
own case stated from their own point of view, even you might feel a
little confused about that. Still, I am going to be very honest with
you. I think myself that Germany wanted war."

"There you are, then," she declared triumphantly. "The whole thing is
her responsibility."

"I do not quite go so far as that," he protested. "You see, the world is
governed by great natural laws. As a snowball grows larger with rolling,
so it takes up more room. As a child grows out of its infa