Soon he would lead her back to her mother and leave her there and never see her again.
But this was not the climax of the afternoon.
When he looked up from gazing into the pool the whole world seemed to have changed.

He was still dazzled perhaps by the reflection of the water in his eyes, and yet it was not altogether that.

It was not altogether because the day was slipping from afternoon into evening.
The lazy ripple of the water as it slutched up the sand and then broke, the shadows that were creeping farther and farther from rock to rock, the green light that pushed up from the horizon into the faint blue, the grey web of the sea, the thick gathering of the hills as they crept more closely about the little darkening beach...

it was none of these things.
He began hurriedly to tell Charlotte about the Scarlet Admiral.

Even as he told her he was himself caught into the excitement of the narration.
He forgot her; he did not see her white cheeks, her mouth open with terror, an expression new to her, that her face had never known before, stealing into her eyes.