Once they paused in their
desultory talk and listened to the lovely chorus of a West Indian
evening, that low incessant ringing of a million tiny bells. The bells
hung in the throats of nothing more picturesque than grasshoppers,
serpents, lizards, and frogs so small as to be almost invisible, but
they rang with a harmony that the inherited practice of centuries had
given them. And beyond was the monotonous accompaniment of the sea on
the rocks. Hamilton lived to be an old man, and he never left the West
Indies; but sometimes, at long and longer intervals, he found himself
listening to that Lilliputian orchestra, his attention attracted to it,
possibly, by a stranger; and then he remembered this night, and the
woman for whom he would have sacrificed earth and immortality had he
been lord of them.
Heaven knows what they talked about. While it was light they stared out
at the blue sea or down on the rippling cane-fields, not daring to
exchange more than a casual and hasty glance. Both knew that they should
have separated the moment they met, but neither had the impulse nor the
intention to leave the shade of the wood; and when the brief twilight
fell and the moon rose, there still was Nevis, and after her the many
craft to divert their gaze.
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