“No, Eva. . . . It is as much your duty to go as mine to stay. You . . . you must fall in with my wishes . . . you must be reasonable . . . you must be a good girl . . .” He stroked her cheek, and the unfamiliar tenderness of the action made her burst into tears. She sobbed quietly on the breast of his black coat. Quite gently he disengaged her hands.
“Now you must go, dear. I am trusting you to Mr. M‘Crae. God keep you.”
They kissed. They had never kissed each other since they were children.
“Oh, James . . .” she said.
“I am very happy . . . I am perfectly happy . . .”
“Come along,” said M‘Crae in a peculiarly harsh voice which he did not know himself.
She slipped the band of the Mannlicher over his shoulder and they left the house. Left alone, James sighed and straightened his hair. He went on to the stoep and looked out over the silent lands. The growing moon now sailed so splendidly up the sky that he became conscious of the earth’s impetuous spin; he saw the outstretched continent as part of its vast convexity and himself, in this moment of extreme exaltation, an infinitesimal speck in the midst of it. Even in the face of this appalling lesson in proportion his soul was confident and deliciously thrilled with expectation of some imminent miracle. His lips moved:
“And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not five sparrows . . .” He moistened his lips “. . . five sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them is forgotten before God.”
III
M‘Crae and Eva moved quietly through the garden. The shadow of the avenue of flamboyant trees shielded them from the moonlight, their steps could scarcely be heard upon the sandy floor, and she could only see M‘Crae, moving swiftly in front of her, where the blotches of silver falling from the interstices of woven boughs flaked his ghostly figure, the hump of the knapsack slung across his shoulders, or sometimes the blue barrel of the Mannlicher which he trailed. She followed without question, pausing when he halted, creeping forward when he moved: and, deeply though she trusted him, she found herself wondering at the strangeness of the whole proceeding, at its fantastic unreality, at the incredible perversity of a chance which had sent them out into the darkness together on this debatable quest. Her reason told her that the two of them were in stark reality running for their lives: that in all probability she had said good-bye to James for the last time: that there was nothing else to be done. She couldn’t believe this. It was no good, she told herself, trying to believe it. It was simply a monstrous fact which must be accepted without questioning. It was no good trying to think about the business which must simply be accepted. She sighed to herself and followed M‘Crae.