[The sea without a stain on it, thought Lily Bris-coe, still standing and looking out over the bay.The sea is stretched like silk across the bay. Distancehad an extraordinary power; they had been swal-lowed up in it, she felt, they were gone for ever, theyhad become part of the nature of things. It wasso calm; it was so quiet. The steamer itself hadvanished, but the great scroll of smoke still hung inthe air and drooped like a flag mournfully in vale-diction.]11

It was like that then, the island, thought Cam,once more drawing her fingers through the waves.She had never seen it from out at sea before. It laylike that on the sea, did it, with a dent in the middleand two sharp crags, and the sea swept in there, andspread away for miles and miles on either side of theisland. It was very small; shaped something like aleaf stood on end. So we took a little boat, shethought, beginning to tell herself a story of adventureabout escaping from a sinking ship. But with thesea streaming through her fingers, a spray of seaweedvanishing behind them, she did not want to tell her-self seriously a story; it was the sense of adventureand escape that she wanted, for she was thinking, asthe boat sailed on, how her father’s anger about thepoints of the compass, James’s obstinacy about thecompact, and her own anguish, all had slipped, allhad passed, all had streamed away. What thencame next? Where were they going? From her