“What if I’m afraid? Suppose one of those lions they’ve been talking about got hold of me? It would be your doing.”
Hermia smiled to herself. The excuse was too transparent. He afraid! The gleam of her white teeth in the darkness betrayed her.
“It’s no laughing matter,” he said. “Listen, darling, you don’t really want to get rid of me?”
“It would be better if you were to go, dearest,” she answered, slipping her hand into his. “Believe me, it would.”
The softness of her voice, the thrill of her touch simply intoxicated him with ecstasy, and there was an unsteadiness in his tone as he answered—
“Surely in the wilds of Mashunaland we can chuck conventionalities to the winds. If it was any one else who asked you for a shakedown you wouldn’t turn him out. Why me, then?”
“Because it is you, don’t you see?” was the reply, breathed low and soft, as the pressure of her fingers tightened.
They could hear each other’s heart-beats in the still dead silence—could see the light of each other’s eyes in the gleam of the myriad stars. The trailing streak of a meteor shot across the dark, velvety vault, showing in its momentary gleam to each the face of the other. Suddenly Hermia started violently.
“Hark! what is that?” she cried, springing to her feet.
For a loud harsh shout had cleft the stillness of the night. It was followed by another and another. Coming as it did upon the dead silence, the interruption was, to say the least, startling: all the more so to these two, their nerves in a state of high-strung tension.