I used to ask myself, when the heather moon vanished behind a mountain or into the sea, in what secret place she lurked while she hid from the world? Now I know that the purple island of Dhrum is her fastness, and that because she loved us she brought us safely here, together.
I wonder sometimes if Basil will ever write his romance of our journeyings and adventures under the heather moon—months or years from now, when he has forgotten to be sad, and is only pleasantly romantic, as when I knew him first? Ian says he will never write it, because if he did, he would have to be the villain; and no man ever yet made himself the villain of his own book. Perhaps that is true. But I do not think there ought to be a real villain in a story about a rainbow key and a heather moon.
THE END