I should have died if you'd left me.” He was feeling both amused and annoyed at his surrender; at the same time he was on the alert for developments. She had extinguished the lamps. The sole illumination was the firelight. For what reason she had done it, whether as an aid to confession or as a discouragement to watchers, she allowed him to guess. Whatever the reason, the precaution was wise, but it increased the atmosphere of liaison. He had pushed back his chair to the extreme corner of the hearth, so that he was scarcely discernible. She sat where the glow from the coals beat up into her face. He saw her profile against a background of darkness.
“Died!” He pursed his lips in masculine omniscience. “You'd have gone to your bed and had a good night's rest.”
“I shouldn't. I was in terror. I used to be afraid only by night; now it's both day and night. You're never afraid. You weren't afraid even when I——. How do you manage it?”
“By doing things, instead of thinking about the things that can be done to me. I've learned that what we fear never happens—fear's a waste of time. Fear's imagination playing tricks by pouncing out of cupboards. It's the idiot of the intellect, gibbering in the attic after nightfall. IPs a coward, spreading cowardice with false alarms. It's a liar and a libeller; life's a thousand times kinder than fear would have us paint it.”
She sighed happily. “It was kind to me to-night.” He waited for her confession to commence. She leaned back, her eyes half shut, watching the red landscape in the dancing flames. Time moved gently. Night seemed eternal. Her contentment proved contagious. Neither of them spoke. Nothing mattered save the comfort of her presence. In a hollow of the coals he invented a dream cottage to which he would take her. It had a scarlet wood behind it and mountains with ruby-tinted caves. As the fire settled, the mirage faded.
“Does it strike you as comic,” he questioned, “that you and I should sit here after midnight and that I shouldn't even know what to call you?”
“Varensky. Anna Varensky.”
“Russian?”
She nodded.
“But are you Russian?”