t time doubts of his sanity. A woman might have kept such a tryst;
but a man consoles himself.

Passers had been less frequent than usual, but again there was a crunch
of approaching feet. Again he leaned forward, and the sparks in his eyes
enlarged, and faded, as two fat women wobbled over the unsteady stones,
exclaiming and balancing themselves, oblivious to the blue man and me.

"It is four o'clock," said one, pausing to look at her watch. "This air
gives one such an appetite I shall never be able to wait for dinner."

"When the girls come in from golf at five we will have some tea," said
the other.

Retarding beach gadders passed us. Some of them noticed me with a start,
but the blue man, wrapped in rigid privacy, with his head sunk on his
breast, still evaded curious eyes.

I began to see that his clothes were by no means new, though they suited
the wearer with a kind of masculine elegance. The blue man's head had so
entirely dominated my attention that the cut of his coat and his pointed
collar and neckerchief seemed to appear for the first time.

He turned his face to me once more, but before our brief talk could be
resumed another woman came around the jut of cliff, so light-footed
that she did not make as much noise on the stones as the fat women
could still be heard making while they floundered eastward, their backs
towards us. The blue man had impressed me as being of middle age. But I
felt mistaken; he changed so completely. Springing from the rock like a
boy, his eyes glorified, his lips quivering, he met with open arms the
woman who had come around the jut of the Giant's Stairway. At first
glance I thought her a slim old woman with the kind of hair which looks
either blond or gray. But the maturity glided into sinuous girlishness,
yielding to her lover, and her hair shook loose, floating over his
shoulder.

I dropped my eyes. I heard a pebble stir under their feet. The tinkle of
water falling down its ferny tunnel could be guessed at; and the beauty
of the world stabbed one with such keenness that the stab brought tears.

We have all had our dreams of flying; or floating high or low, lying
extended on the air at will. By what process of association I do not
know, the perfect naturalness and satisfaction of flying recurred to me.
I was cleansed from all doubt of ultimate good. The meeting of the blue
man and the woman with floating hair seemed to be what the island had
awaited for thirty-five years.