'You are not, dear. You knew me when I was young, and others didn't.'

Somehow or other her objections were got over, and though she did not
give an immediate assent, she agreed to meet him later in the
afternoon, when she walked with him to the southern point of the island
called the Beal, or, by strangers, the Bill, pausing over the
treacherous cavern known as Cave Hole, into which the sea roared and
splashed now as it had done when they visited it together as children.
To steady herself while looking in he offered her his arm, and she took
it, for the first time as a woman, for the hundredth time as his
companion.

They rambled on to the lighthouse, where they would have lingered
longer if Avice had not suddenly remembered an engagement to recite
poetry from a platform that very evening at the Street of Wells, the
village commanding the entrance to the island--the village that has now
advanced to be a town.

'Recite!' said he. 'Who'd have thought anybody or anything could
recite down here except the reciter we hear away there--the never
speechless sea.'

'O but we are quite intellectual now. In the winter particularly.
But, Jocelyn--don't come to the recitation, will you? It would spoil
my performance if you were there, and I want to be as good as the
rest.'

'I won't if you really wish me not to. But I shall meet you at the
door and bring you home.'