“Oh, she’ll come without that,” Paul answered, smiling at the peremptory tone.
“You go first, then. I will bring her.”
“Don’t leave me alone with Eve,” pleaded Cicely, shrinking close to Paul.
“Take her back,” said Eve. And her voice expressed such acute suffering that Paul did his best to content her.
“Come,” he said, gently, taking Cicely’s hand.
“A moment,” answered Cicely, putting her other hand on Paul’s arm, as if to hold his attention. “And then she said: ‘Don’t you remember that we escaped through the woods to the north point, and that you tried to push off the boat, and couldn’t. Don’t you remember that gleam of the candle down the dark road?’”
Eve made an involuntary movement.
“I wonder what candle she could have been thinking of!” pursued Cicely, in a musing voice. “There are a great many candles in the Catholic churches, that I know.”
Eve looked across at Paul with triumph in her eyes.
“And she said that a baby climbed up by one of the seats,” Cicely went on. “And that this man—I don’t know who he was, exactly—made a dash forward—” Here she lost the thread, and stopped. Then she began again: “She took me away ever so far—we went in a steamboat; and Ferdie died all alone! You can’t like her for that, Paul; you can’t!” Her face altered. “Why don’t I see him over there on the other beach?” she asked, quickly.