“What? But then--”
The girl withdrew her hand from him and arose.
“I see it's no use, Allan,” she said decisively. “So long as I stay with you you'll ask questions and excite yourself. I'm going! Then you'll have to keep still!”
“Beta! Beta!” he implored. “I'll be good! Don't leave me--you mustn't!”
“All right; but if you ask me another question, a single one, mind, I'll truly go!”
“Just give me your hand, girlie, that's all! Come here--sit down beside me again--so!”
He turned on his side, on the rude couch of coarse brown fabric stuffed with dried seaweed, laid his hollow cheek upon her hand, and gave a deep sigh.
“Now, I'm off,” he murmured. “Only, don't leave me, Beta!”
For half an hour after his deep, slow breathing told that the wounded man was sleeping soundly--half an hour as time was measured where the sun shone, for down in the black depths of the abyss all such divisions were as naught, Beatrice sat lovingly and tenderly beside the primitive bed. Her right palm beneath his face, she stroked his long hair and his wan cheek with her other hand; and now she smiled with pride and reminiscence, now a grave, troubled look crossed her features.
The light, a fiber wick burning in a stone cup of oil upon a stone-slab table in the center of the hut, “uttered unsteadily, casting huge and dancing shadows up the black walls.