An odd thrill ran through Kirby. Pirates! Easy to imagine them, on just such a night as this, landing in the cove below the rocks—swarthy, evil men, creeping up inch by inch, with knives between their teeth. They would leap upon him suddenly; there would be a desperate fight in the glare of the fire. Then the pirate chief would carry away the girl, and Kirby, the hero, would somehow escape from his bonds and swim after them, and save her.
She would know exactly how to behave in such circumstances, he felt sure. He felt sure, too, that if he were to suggest that they should “make believe” there were pirates here, she would immediately and seriously agree. She was like a little girl, like some playmate from his lost youth. In some queer way of her own she evoked for him the glamour of childhood—she and her pirate’s earring!
He sat down beside her, and they began to talk. It no longer seemed to him a foolish and imprudent thing that she should have come to him like this. She had the unthinking independence that children have. She would go where she chose, and, if she was startled or distrustful, she would run away.
It made him happy that she should be here, this friendly little thing with her pretty voice.
“The fire’s getting low!” she cried.
Springing up, she gathered an armful of wood to put on it. So did he, and they stood side by side, throwing in the sticks with nice care. The flames leaped up, and he saw her face—a small, pointed face framed in dark hair, which floated in silky threads, and lit up by big, shining dark eyes. It was like a face in a dream, so lovely that it almost took his breath away.[Pg 518]
She sat down again, her head a little turned away from the blaze, and he could no longer see her face; but he remembered it. It was there before him in the dark, in all its vivid loveliness. He could not think of her as a playmate now. The magic evocation of childhood was gone; he was a man, and she was a young and beautiful woman. His content, his happiness, had vanished. He was troubled, almost dismayed.
“I’ve never seen any one like her!” he thought. “I didn’t know there was any one like her; and for her to come to me like this!”
After all, wasn’t it what he had been waiting for, just this glimpse of a lovely face, this clear and steady little voice in the dark, this utterly unexpected encounter in the firelight on the lonely beach?
She was still talking to him, with a sort of eagerness, but he scarcely listened now. It seemed to him that her voice had changed. Indeed, he could not hear or see her now. The fire was dying down, and she was no more than a little silhouette against the starlit sky; but in her place there was another—some one very beautiful and almost august, like the young Diana come to earth. The innocence and candor of her were sublime; she was fearless, of course, just as she was beautiful.