She strained away from him, to search his beloved face as well as the darkness of the night would permit. Faintly she could see the tremble of his tender, deeply carved lips, so dearly boyish. His eyes looked big and black in the night, but there was a gleam of such divine light in them that her fingers crept up his face tremblingly and closed his eyelids, for she suddenly felt abashed, unworthy of his love.
“I love you with every cell in my body, every thought in my mind and every beat of my heart,” David answered huskily. “And now let’s travel, honey. I don’t know where we’re going, but we’ve got to put as much distance as possible between us and this town before morning.”
But before they set off again he kissed her, not one of the long ardent kisses that made her dizzy and frightened even as they exalted her, but a shy, sweet touching of his lips to her forehead. It was as if he were telling her, wordlessly, that she would be utterly safe with him through the long, dark hours ahead of them.
They did not talk much as they walked steadily along the dirt roads, choosing them in preference to the frequented paved highway, for David cautioned her to save her breath for the all-important task of covering many miles before daybreak. Neither of them had any idea of the geography of this state to which the carnival had brought them, but they felt that it mattered little. David, country-bred, had an instinct for direction. He had chosen to turn toward the east, and Sally trotted along by his side, supremely confident that he would lead her out of danger.
“One o’clock, darling,” he announced at last, when Sally was so tired that she could hardly put one foot before the other. “We’ll rest awhile and then plod along. There’s a farmhouse near. See the cows lined up by the fence? We’ll find a well and have a drink.”
A three-quarters moon rode high in the sky but its light was intermittently obscured by ragged, scuddling clouds. When they had had their drink of ice-cold cistern water David made a pillow of his coat which he had been carrying over his arm, and forced Sally to lie down for awhile in the soft loam of a recently ploughed field.
He sat at a little distance from her, not touching her, his knees drawn up and clasped by his strong, tanned hands, but his head was thrown back and his eyes brooded upon the cloud-disturbed beauty of the night sky.
“Does your shoulder hurt, darling?” Sally asked anxiously.
“No,” he answered, without looking at her. “It’s all healed. Just a flesh wound, you know.”
The tone of his voice silenced her. She knew he was brooding over their future, puzzling his young head as to what he was to do with her, and she lay very still, humble before his masculinity.