In Secret

He began to tremble. "That nightmare through which I've struggled," he began, but she interrupted: "It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world's before you." At that he caught her slim hand in both of his: "Eve! Eve! You've brought me through death's shadow! You gave me back my mind!"

She let her hand rest between his. At first he could not make out what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard her murmur: "Beside the still waters." The sea had become as calm as a pond.

And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all. Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the davits.

"Is somebody going ashore?" asked McKay.

"We are," said the girl.

"Just you and I, Eve?"

"Just you and I."

Then he saw their luggage piled in the lifeboat.'

"This is wonderful," he said. "I have a house a few miles inland from Strathlone Head."

"Will you take me there, Kay?"

Such a sense of delight possessed him that he could not speak.

"That's where we must go to make our plans," she said. "I didn't tell you in those dark hours we have lived together, because our minds were so far apart--and I was fighting so hard to hold you."

"Have you forgiven me--you wonderful girl?"

His voice shook so that he could scarcely control it. Miss Erith laughed.

"You adorable boy!" she said. "Stand still while I unlace your life-belt. You can't travel in this."

He felt her soft fingers at his throat and turned his face upward. All the blue air seemed glittering with the sun-tipped wings of gulls. The skylark's song, piercingly sweet, seemed to penetrate his soul. And, as his life-suit fell about him, so seemed to fall the heavy weight of dread like a shroud, dropping at his feet. And he stepped clear--took his first free step toward her--as though between them there were no questions, no barriers, nothing but this living, magic light--which bathed them both.

There seemed to be no need of speech, either, only the sense of heavenly contact as though the girl were melting into him, dissolving in his arms.

"Kay!"

Her voice sounded as from an infinite distance. There came a smothered thudding like the soft sound of guns at sea; and then her voice again, and a greyness as if a swift cloud had passed across the sun.

"Kay!"

A sharp, cold wind began to blow through the strange and sudden darkness. He heard her voice calling his name--felt his numbed body shaken, lifted his head from his arms and sat upright on his bunk in the dim chill of his cabin.