Another match flared, and again she saw the chasm, and the nearness of the edge. She bore it until the pipe was drawing well. Then: “Oh, Jim,” she said, “I am so sorry; but I am afraid I am becoming dizzy. I feel as though I must fall over.” She gave a half sob.
Jim Airth turned, instantly alert.
“Nonsense,” he said, but the sharp word sounded tender. “Four good feet of width are as safe as forty. Change your position a bit.” He put his arm around her, and moved her so that she leant more completely against the cliff at their backs. “Now forget the edge,” he said, “and listen. I am going to tell you camp yarns, and tales of the Wild West.”
Then as they sat on in the darkness, Jim Airth smoked and talked, painting vivid word-pictures of life and adventure in other lands. And Myra listened, absorbed and enchanted; every moment realising more fully, as he unconsciously revealed it, the manly strength and honest simplicity of his big nature, with its fun and its fire; its huge capacity for enjoyment; its corresponding capacity for pain.
And, as she listened, her heart said: “Oh, my cosmopolitan cowboy! Thank God you found no title in the book, to put you off. Thank God you found no name which you could ‘place,’ relegating its poor possessor to the ranks of ‘society leaders’ in which you would have had no share. And, oh! most of all, I thank God for the doctor’s wise injunction: ‘Leave behind you your own identity’!”
CHAPTER XII
UNDER THE MORNING STAR
The night wore on.