“One can’t turn one’s back on an incident so as to forget it altogether,” she had objected.
“For the matter of that,” he had returned, “a man can’t command memory, but he can so put a thing out of mind that it ceases to disturb him.”
“Then, if ever I chance to elope with Van Bleit,” Tottie had flung at him audaciously, “I shall have the satisfaction of knowing my memory is relegated to the ashbin...”
They sat on until the light failed and darkness settled upon the veld, closing about them stealthily, and shutting out the immensity of the endless stretch of treeless waste that was all that could be seen from the house, a wide expanse of undulating veld held in the blue hollow of the sky. The darkness crept closer. It shut out the face of each from the other’s view. A small red glow marked where Tottie still held a cigarette between her painted lips, and a larger duller glow shone from the bowl of Lawless’ pipe.
“The moon will be up in a short while,” he said abruptly, and the words, quietly as he had spoken, snapped the silence almost violently, as a voice raised above a whisper in a death-chamber might do. “Shall we stay and see it rise?”
“Yes, if you like.”
She flung the end of her cigarette out into the darkness, and watched it where it lay like a somewhat fiery glow-worm until it smouldered out.
And then slowly the darkness began less to roll away than to disclose itself. Black objects stood out dimly from the shade, and the line of the horizon defined itself and almost imperceptibly, so gradual was the change, grew lighter. Tones of colour appeared in the picture; the black melted into purple, so rich and deep as to seem more dense than the sombre shade it superseded. And then abruptly the scene brightened. A soft yellow glow appeared in the sky, and the inverted curve of a blood-red moon showed above the horizon.
Lawless stood up, and knocking the ash from his pipe, leant with his shoulder pressed against the framework of the door, and watched the rising of the moon in silence until, like a thing released from restraining bonds, new-dipped in the life-blood of departed day, it shot up into the sky. He was not aware how long he remained thus, he was not aware that his companion had risen also and stood beside him, until he felt the touch of a hand upon his shoulder.
“Grit, it’s cold,” a voice said, rousing him from his meditations.—“And we haven’t any bedclothes.”