Neither spoke when it had ended. She turned aside and stood
motionless a moment, resting against the stair rail as though to
steady herself. Her small head was lowered.
He managed to say: "You will give me the next?"
"No."
"Then the next----"
"No," she said, not moving.
A young fellow came up eagerly, cocksure of her, but she shook her
head--and shook her head to all--and Berkley remained standing
beside her. And at last her reluctant head turned slowly, and,
slowly, her gaze searched his.
"Shall we rest?" he said.
"Yes. I am--tired."
Her dainty avalanche of skirts filled the stairs as she settled
there in silence; he at her feet, turned sideways so that he could
look up into the brooding, absent eyes.
And over them again--over the small space just then allotted them
in the world--was settling once more the intangible, indefinable
spell awakened by their first light contact. Through its silence
hurried their pulses; through its significance her dazed young eyes
looked out into a haze where nothing stirred except a phantom
heart, beating, beating the reveille. And the spell lay heavy on
them both.
"I shall bear your image always. You know it."
She seemed scarcely to have heard him.
"There is no reason in what I say. I know it. Yet--I am destined
never to forget you."
She made no sign.
"Ailsa Paige," he said mechanically.
And after a long while, slowly, she looked down at him where he sat
at her feet, his dark eyes fixed on space.