Mackenzie touched her shoulder.
“Joan! O Joan, Joan!” he said.
Joan, shivering, her shoulders lifted as if to fend against a winter blast, only cried the harder into her 121 hands. He stood with hand touching her shoulder lightly, the quiver of her body shaking him to the heart. But no matter how inviting the opening, a man could not speak what rose in his heart to say, standing as he stood, a debtor in such measure. To say what he would have said to Joan, he must stand clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on his soul.
Mackenzie groaned in spirit, and his words were a groan, as he said again:
“Joan! O Joan, Joan!”
“I knew they’d come tonight––I couldn’t sleep.”
“Thank God for your wakefulness!” said he.
She was passing out of the reefs of terror, calming as a wind falls at sunset. Mackenzie pressed her arm, drawing her away a little.
“That ammunition––we’d better–––”
“Yes,” said Joan, and went with him a little farther down the slope.