It was only a whisper. She would have felt the truth had he been voiceless.
"I love you, I love you!"
It was but a murmur that blended with the sigh of the wind, that harmonized with the sound made by the breeze as it swept through the cracks and crannies of the ship, yet another listened, another heard.
Profanation to the royal arcanum of their hearts!
One had marked them descending the hill, one had divined that they would stop by the ship, one had gone down into the grim, black depths of the monster and with his ear pressed against the riven side had heard, and in the hearing had understood what he could not see.
So despair, heart-break, envy, jealousy, raged a few feet from love and joy and peace ineffable.
So in life it happens. Was there not a serpent in the Garden of Eden?
As he heard the sound of lip on lip, the break of kisses, and the murmur of caressing words, the man listening could endure no more. He turned and stumbled blindly away. Had it been mid-day he could not have seen where he went.
The sound of his going startled Emily.
"What is that?" she cried; "something moving on the ship!"