“You sent me away,” returned the girl, with a trace of dogged protest in her voice. “You wouldn’t let me help.”
“I should hope not,” laughed Tom, nervously, taking off his hat and passing his hand through his hair, from which odors of smoke flowed as he stirred it. “You were hardly made to fight fire.”
“No,” she answered, with sudden and significant vehemence, “I was not made to fight fire.”
He moved uneasily where he stood in the darkness; then he took a stride forward and sat down beside her. They were silent a moment, his eyes fixed upon the first far sign of dawn, while hers searched the gloom for his features.
“Columbine,” he began, at length, in a voice of strange softness, “it would have been better for us both if I had never come here.”
“No, no,” was her eager reply; “I cannot have you say that. You have put savor into my life that was so vapid before.”
“But a bitter savor,” he said.
“Bitter, yes,” Columbine returned in a voice which, though low and restrained, betrayed the fierceness of her excitement. “Bitter as death; but sweet too, sweet as—”
She left the sentence unfinished. Below on the shore the full tide was lapping the stones with monotonous melody. Save for their iterance, the stillness was almost as deep as the marvellous silence of a winter night which no sound of living thing breaks.
“Whatever comes,” Columbine murmured a moment later, her voice changed and softened so that he had to bend to catch her words, “I am glad of all that has happened; glad of you; glad, always glad.”