The sun sank low, the white road grew pallid. "Better turn presently," said Hagar.
"When we get to that palm. How wonderful it stands against the sky!--I never thought that I should see palm trees."
When they came to it, the negro driver turned the horse. Roll of wheel and slow thud of hoofs they went dreamily back toward Nassau. The walls on either hand were darkening; the sky was putting on a splendid dress.
"Years and years now I have been away," said Hagar. "In the spring I am going home."
"At first, yes, I think ... then, I do not know. I have been away so long. There are people in New York I want to see--old friends--women. Do you chance to know Elizabeth Eden?"
"Yes, I know her. She's one of the blessed." After a moment he said abruptly, "I want you to know Rose Darragh."
They came before long to the shell house. "Let us stop and get some shells."
Inside they had the place, save for the merchant of shells, to themselves. Right and left and all around were strewn the pearl and pink and purply spoils. All the sunset tints were here, and the beauty of delicate form--grotesqueries, too; nature in queer moods. It was pleasant to run the hands through the myriad small shells heaped in baskets, to weigh the sea-cushions and sea-stars and golden seafeathers, to admire rose coral and brain coral and finger coral, and hold the conch shells to the ear. Through the open door, too, came the smell and murmur of the near-by sea, and on the floor lay one last splash of sunlight. "Give me a shell," said Hagar, "and I will give you one. Then each of us will have something to remember the other by."
They gravely picked them out, and it took some minutes to do it. Then in turn each crossed to the merchant in his corner and paid the purchase price, then came back to the light in the doorway.
Denny held out a delicate, translucent, rosy shell. "It won't hold my gratitude," he said. "You'll never know.... I used to see you in the moonlight, between me and the bars.... Somebody had cried for me, ... wept passionately. It helped to keep me human. I've always seen you with a light about you. This is your shell."
"Thank you. I shall keep your kind gift always," said Hagar. She spoke in a child's lyric voice, quaintly and properly, so precisely as she might have spoken at twelve years old that, startled herself, she laughed, and Denny, with a catch in his voice, laughed too. "Oh," she cried with something like a sob, "sixteen years to slip from one like that!" She held out a small purple shell. "This is yours, Denny Gayde.... And I've thought of you often, and wished you well. If I did you, unknowing, a service, so you, unknowing, have done me a service, too. That summer morning, long ago--it shocked me awake. The world since then has been different always, more pitiful and nearer. Here's your shell. It won't hold my gratitude and well-wishing either."