"Oh, he is saved, if you mean that," Sir George declared lightly.
"I told you so," reminded the duke, proudly. "I said: 'Nina will wake him up.' She always wakes everybody up. She says what you wouldn't think she'd say, and it wakes one up most uncommonly."
And they went forward with their game. For that matter so did Mrs. Darling and Carleigh.
"Are you stopping here for long?" he asked.
"For as long as I can stand it."
"You mean—"
She clasped her hands behind her head and gazed intently into the very soul of the embers. "I mean that I soon choke and stifle in the close air of man. I am happier alone."
Freshly startled, he stared afresh. "It's always bad, then?" he asked sympathetically. "You don't get over it?"
"It's always bad." She paused a second or more, and then turned toward him, her eyes narrowed in that characteristic style which Kneedrock had described so harshly.
"But it is glorious, all the same," she cried with an odd little soft rapture. "You haven't come to that yet. You've not gone on to where one fights for the mere joy of loving love, in life, as one fights for breath in a suffocating pit. Why shouldn't I love to love? I love to do it. I love it all. I'd double the stakes at every loss, if I could. Do you follow me?"