“I throw in my lot with life, too, Eppie,” he said, “and I ask no more of it than the here and the now of our human affair. But that I do ask with all my might, and if might can give it to me, I’ll get it.”
She looked up at him gravely, without challenge, with a sympathy too deep for pity.
“At all events,” he added slowly, “at all events, in so far, our lots are cast together.”
“Yes,” she assented.
His eyes studied hers; his keen mind questioned itself: Could a woman look so steadily, with such a clear, untroubled sympathy, upon such a love as his, were there no great emotion within her, controlling her, absorbing her, making her indifferent to all lesser appeals? Had this negative, this aimless, this ambiguous man, captured, without any fight for it, her strong, her reckless heart? So he questioned, while Eppie still answered his gaze with eyes that showed him nothing but their grave, deep friendship.
“So it’s a contest between life and death?” he said at last.
“Between me and Gavan you mean?”
The shield of their personal question had dropped from her again, and the quick flush was in her cheek.
“Oh, I come into it, too,” he ventured.
“You don’t, in any way, depend on it, Jim.”