They watched the mad cavalry charge of creaming billows; watched them break, thundering and throwing their spray heavenwards like a continuous play of white fountains all along the line of march. To the right, beyond the village whence they had come, where the cliff jutted out at its lowest level, a ghostly fountain leaped again and again sheer over the top of the cliff with a crashing and splashing that was succeeded by the long-receding moan of the back-drawn wave soughing through the rattling pebbles.
Her face, flushed with the passion of the storm, showed divinely in the dim starlight; beneath her wrap her bosom, panting from the walk in the teeth of the wind, heaved with excitement; the gale had dishevelled her hair. They scarcely spoke; the organ-roll of the sea crashed majestically like the bass in some savage symphony of the winds.
Now at last the moon leaped out, framed in a weird cloud-rack; the moonlight played on her loveliness and made it wonderful.
She moved slightly forward. “The cliff is too damp to lean upon,” she murmured.
Audaciously he slipped a trembling arm against the rock and let her form rest against that. She scarcely seemed conscious of him; she was watching the rampant, seething waters, volleying their white jets skyward with a crash of cannon that outroared the wind; her scarlet lips were parted eagerly; the dreamy light had gone from her eyes; they flashed fire.
“Oh, I could dare to-night!” she cried.
The wind blew her tresses into his face; the perfume of them stung his blood. Her loveliness was maddening him. So close! so close! Oh, to shower mad kisses upon her lips, her eyes, her hair! What did it matter, there on that wild beach alone with the elements! He had been so near death; who would have recked if he had been dead now, tossed in that welter of waters?
The waves broke with a thousand thunders, the white fountains flew at the stars; they seemed alive, exultant, frenzied with the ecstasy of glorious living. Oh, for life—simple, sublime—the keen, tingling, savage life of Vikings and sea-robbers in the days before civilization, in the full-blooded days when men loved and hated fiercely, strenuously, wrenching through rapine and slaughter the women they coveted. Ah, surely he had some of their blood; it ran in his veins like fire; he was of their race, despite his dreamings. He was his father’s son, loving the storm and the battle.
The wind wailed; it was like the cry of his tortured heart, his yearning for happiness. It rose higher and higher. A bat flew between them and the moon. Eleanor nestled to him involuntarily; her face was very near to his. It gleamed seductively; there was no abashment, only alluring loveliness; the fire in her eyes kindled him now not to the secondary life of Art, but to the primary life of realities. Could she not hear his heart beat? Yes, surely the storm of the elements had passed into her blood, too. Her face was ardent, ecstatic. His arm held her tight. Oh, to stake the world on a kiss!
The moon was hidden again; they were alone in the mad, dim night; the complexities of Society were far away. They looked at each other, and through her eyes he seemed to see heaven.