Hugh’s teeth chattered, and he bent closer to the fire.
“Ugh—it was cold down there,” he said, “like a grave! Sylvie, come here.” Just an echo of his old imperious fashion it was—though the look was that of a beggar for alms. “Give me those warm little hands of yours.” She knelt close to him, rubbed his hands in hers, looking up at Pete with a tremulous mouth that asked for advice.
“He’ll be all right in a minute,” said Pete. “You talk to him, Sylvie.”
“Yes, you talk—you talk. Do you remember how I talked to you when you were afraid of the bears—ah!” He drew her head savagely against his breast, folded his arms about it, stroked the hair. “Sylvie! Is it all right? Can it be—the same?”
“Yes, yes, why not?”
“Were you frightened?”
“Not after the first. After they had described you, I knew that they were looking for the wrong man, and then I felt all right. I didn’t know—poor Hugh!—how cold and cramped you were. What a shame that you took a false alarm and hid yourself! I don’t believe there would have been a bit of danger if you’d stayed out. They’d never even heard of you, I suppose.”
Her talk, so gay, so strangely at cross-purposes with reality, was like a vivifying wine to him. The color came back into his face; a wild sort of relief lighted his eyes.
“Then it didn’t occur to you, Sylvie, that that brute might have been me—that the men might, after all, have been describing me—eh?” he asked, risking all his hope on one throw.
She laughed, and, lifting herself a little in his arms, touched her soft mouth to his. “But, Hugh, you told me your story, don’t you remember? And it is gloriously, mercifully different from Rutherford’s.”