"Why do you not tear it up, like you did the first?" she had asked.
"Because this is the mood I would capture, and remember," he had said.
"As being more fitting to a member of the crew of La Mouette?"
"Perhaps," he answered, but he would say nothing more. And here he was now, forgetful of his drawing, intent only upon this business of fishing, while only a few miles away there were men who planned his capture, his death, and even at this moment possibly the servants of Eustick, and Penrose, and Godolphin were asking questions along the coast, and in the scattered hamlets of the countryside.
"What is the matter?" he said quietly, breaking in upon her thoughts. "Do you not want to fish any more?"
"I was thinking about this afternoon," she said.
"Yes, I know, I could see that by your face. Tell me about it."
"You should not stay here any more. They are beginning to suspect. They were all talking about it, gloating over the possibilities of your capture."
"That does not worry me."
"I believe them to be serious, Eustick had a hard, obstinate look about him. He is not a pompous dunderhead like Godolphin. He means to hang you from the tallest tree in Godolphin's park."
"Which is something of a compliment after all."
"Now you are laughing at me. You think that, like all women, I am afire with rumours and gossip."
"Like all women you like to dramatise events."
"And you to ignore them?"
"What would you have me do then?"
"First I would beg you to be cautious. Eustick said that the country people know you have a hiding-place."
"Very possibly."
"And one day someone will betray you, and the creek will be surrounded."
"I am quite prepared for that."
"How are you prepared?"
"Did Eustick and Godolphin tell you how they proposed to capture me?"
"No."
"Neither shall I tell you how I propose to evade them."
"Do you think for one moment I should…"
"I think nothing - but I believe you have a fish on your line."
"You are being deliberately provoking."
"Not at all. If you don't want to land the fish give the line to me."
"I do want to land it."
"Very well then. Haul in your line."
She proceeded to do so, reluctantly, a little sulky, and then - feeling suddenly the tug and the pull upon the hook - she began to haul faster, the wet line falling upon her lap and down to her bare feet; and laughing at him over her shoulder she said, "He's there, I can feel him, he's there, on the end of the hook."
"Not quite so fast," he said quietly, "you may lose him. Gently now, bring him to the side of the boat."
But she would not listen. She stood up in her excitement, letting the line slip for a moment, and then pulled harder than ever, and just as she caught the white gleam of the fish streaking to the surface it jerked upon the line, flashing sideways, and was gone.
Dona gave a cry of disappointment, turning to him with reproachful eyes. "I have lost him," she said, "he has got away."
He looked up at her, laughing, shaking the hair out of his eyes.
"You were too excited."
"I can't help it. It was such a lovely feeling - that tug on the line. And I wanted to catch him so much."
"Never mind. Perhaps you will catch another."
"My line is all in a tangle."
"Give it to me."
"No - I can do it myself."
He took up his own line once again, and she bent down in the boat, gathering the hopeless tangle of wet line into her lap. It had twisted itself into countless loops and knots, and as she strove to unwind it with her fingers it became more tangled than before. She glanced at him, frowning with vexation, and he stretched out his hand, without looking at her, and took the tangle from her. She thought he would mock her, but he said nothing, and she leant back in the bows of the boat and watched his hands as he unravelled the loops and turns of the long wet line.
The sun, away in the west, was flinging ribbons across the sky, and there were little pools of golden light upon the water. The tide was ebbing fast, gurgling past the bows of the boat.
Farther down stream a solitary curlew padded in the mud, and presently he rose in the air, and whistled softly, and was gone.
"When shall we build our fire?" said Dona.
"When we have caught our supper," he answered.
"And supposing we catch no supper?"
"Then we cannot build a fire."
She went on watching his hands, and miraculously, it seemed to her, the line became straight again, and loosely coiled, and he threw it once more over the side and gave her the end to hold.
"Thank you," she said, her voice small, rather subdued, and looking across at him she saw that his eyes were smiling in the secret fashion she had grown to expect from him, and she knew, in some strange way, that the smile was connected with her although he said nothing, and she felt light-hearted suddenly, and curiously gay.
They continued with their fishing, while a single blackbird, hidden in the woods the other side of the river, sang his intermittent song, meditative and sweet.
It seemed to her, as they sat there side by side, without a word, that she had never known peace before, until this moment, that all the restless devils inside her who fought and struggled so often for release, were, because of this silence and his presence, now appeased. She felt, in a sense, like someone who had fallen under a spell, under some strange enchantment, because this sensation of quietude was foreign to her, who had lived hitherto in a turmoil of sound and movement. And yet at the same time the spell awoke echoes within her that she recognised, as though she had come to a place she had known always, and deeply desired, but had lost, through her own carelessness, or through circumstance, or the blunting of her own perception.
She knew that it was this peace that she had wanted when she came away from London, and had come to Navron to find, but she knew also that she had found only part of it alone, through the woods, and the sky, and the river, it became full and complete when she was with him, as at the moment, or when he stole into her thoughts.
She would be playing with the children at Navron, or wandering about the garden, filling the vases with flowers, and he away down in his ship in the creek, and because she had knowledge of him there her mind and her body became filled with life and warmth, a bewildering sensation she had never known before.
"It is because we are both fugitives," she thought, "there is a bond between us," and she remembered what he had said that first evening, when he supped at Navron, about bearing the same blemish. Suddenly she saw that he was pulling in his line, and she leaned forward in the boat, her shoulder touching his shoulder, and she called excitedly, "Have you caught something?"
"Yes," he said, "do you want to pull it in?"
"It would not be fair," she said longingly, "he is your fish." Laughing, he gave her the line, and she brought the struggling fish to the side of the boat, and landed it on the bottom boards, where it jumped and flapped, coiling itself in the twisted line. She knelt down and seized it between her hands, her dress all wet and muddied from the river, her ringlets falling over her face.
"He is not so big as the one I lost," she said.