They heard the bell forward ring out sharply. Both counted the strokes in silence.
"Eight bells," she murmured, as it ceased.
The forecastle door opened, and a shaft of light flashed like an opening fan along the wet, shining deck. Shadowy forms began to move about, and vanished in the darkness. Then the door was shut, and the deck was dark again; only the clamor of the rolling vessel and the sea about her went on unceasingly.
"I am glad you told me," Hetty said at last in a low voice that had in it a tremor of exaltation. She did not turn to him as she spoke, but kept her eyes fixed upon the lines of whitened waves glimmering in the dark.
"It was little to tell," he said, with a laugh.
"It was much to know," she answered gently.
He wondered at the touch of feeling in her tone, for he could not know that, having condemned him for a seemingly Laodicean contentment with life, with as little reason she was now prepared to exalt him unduly, seeing in his desired course a form of martyrdom at once moving and heroic. It was in the line of her own desire, and the thought flashed upon her that here was something even she might be permitted to do.
They had come tremblingly to the heights of emotion: a little thing might send the streams of their life together, or bear them farther and farther apart.