Chapter Thirty.
Night! ... night on the veld once more—another luminous night of stars and sweet scents, and the haunting sense of mystery and isolation and intimate companionship, interrupted at intervals of ever greater frequency as the train ran into some wayside station, and hurrying forms moved along the platform, and gazed with faint curiosity into the unlighted carriage, as they passed the open windows and caught a momentary glimpse of the dim faces of a man and woman watching together in the night.
“Ghosts!” Pamela said once, pressing closer against Dare. “Shadows of the night,—flitting in the darkness, and swallowed up in it again. I wonder what they make of us, those ghosts?—two live people alone in a shadow world.”
She shivered slightly as the train sped onward again. Dare took a wrap from the seat and placed it about her shoulders. The temperature had fallen perceptibly. The fierce heat of the day was succeeded by the cold of the Transvaal night,—the cold of a high bracing altitude, following with surprising suddenness on the dry, burning heat of the Karroo. The fierceness and the desolation lay behind. The country presented here a fertile wooded beauty, startling in its greenness, following upon the arid desert through which they had passed.
“Don’t leave me to-night,” Pamela said presently, gripping his hand tightly. “Stay, and let us see it out together. It’s the finish... our last night. To-morrow...”
“There is no to-morrow,” he interposed quickly. “We have no concern with anything but the present I’ll stay... I want to stay. Lean against me, and sleep if you feel like it. I’d like you to sleep, Pamela.”
She laughed softly.
“I don’t want to lose one precious moment in sleep,” she said. “Now talk to me.”
“Last night,” he reminded her, “you didn’t want to talk.”
“I know. But to-night it’s different. There is so little time left. We have got to crowd everything into to-night. I want a store of memories,—a little harvest of summer thoughts to draw upon when the winter comes. We’ve talked so little.”