"If you'd come back, we could have all those times again, Davey," she whispered, looking down into his face beneath hers.
Just when there was the faintest shimmer of dawn in the dim windows, a fluttering breath caught her face. She put the spirit to his lips again. So, chafing his hands and calling him, with tearful and eager little cries, she led him as a mother leads a child just learning to walk, from the valley of the shadows.
Davey opened his eyes. They dwelt on her with a deep, serene gaze. She smiled and went on crooning to him, half singing, half sighing that beguiling little melody of tenderness and entreaty. Warmth came back to him. His breath fell regularly and sweetly. Deirdre took the sheepskins out of the bunk and put them under him on the floor.
He slept. A faint smile on his mouth, his hand sought hers, the fingers curled round it. She sat watching him, a mist of awe and joy and thankfulness gathering in her eyes, because it seemed to her that a miracle had been accomplished that night in Narrow Valley hut.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
When the broad glare of the morning sun broke through the dingy windows of the hut, Deirdre started from the cramped position in which she had fallen, her head leaning wearily against a box.
She was aghast to find that she had been asleep. As she woke with a startled exclamation, a hand went out to her. Her eyes met Davey's.
It was as if that encounter in the valley of shadows had brushed all misunderstandings from the love that was like the sun between them. Deirdre had wrestled with death for possession of him. Her eyes still bore the shadow of the conflict. Davey was wan and vanquished. He knew that she had wrested his spirit from the darkness on which it had been drifting, and the knowledge made a serene joyousness in him.
Speech deserted them; they had no voices to talk with. Just this gazing of eyes on eyes told all that there was to tell.