He recognized everything, to the windy spot where the
gorse flourished on the crown of the cliff. The clean sky told him from
whence the wind blew; the gray gull above was flying with it upon slanting
wings. And Joan stood below in a blaze of sunshine and yellow blossom. A
reflection from the corner of her sunbonnet brightened her face, though it
was shaded from direct sunlight by her hand; her blue eyes mirrored the sea
and the sky; and they met Joe's, like a question. She was looking away to
the edge of the world; and he knew from the name of the picture, which he
had read before he saw it, the object regarded. He glared on, and his
breath came quicker. The brown petticoat with the black patch was familiar
to him; but he had never seen the gleam of her white neck below the collar
where it was hidden from the sun. In the picture an unfastened button
showed this. The rest he knew: her hair, turning at the flapping edge of
the sunbonnet; her slight figure, round waist, and the shoes, whose strings
he had been privileged to tie more than once. Then he remembered her last
promise: to see his ship go down Channel from their old meeting-place upon
Gorse Point; and the memory, thus revived by the actual spectacle of Joan
Tregenza looking her last at his vanishing vessel, brought the wild cry to
Noy's lip with the wringing of his heart. He was absolutely dead to his
environment, and his long days of silence suddenly ended in a futile
outpouring of words addressed to any who might care to listen.
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