He saw Neb drop down before the blazing fireplace, and curl up like a tired dog, and observed her take the lamp, open the door into the other room a trifle, and slip silently out of sight. He remembered staring vaguely about the little room, still illumined by the flames, only half comprehending, and then the reaction from his desperate struggle with the elements overcame all resolution, and he dropped his head forward on the table, and lost consciousness. Her hand upon his shoulder aroused him, startled into wakefulness, yet he scarcely realized the situation.
“I have placed food for the negro beside him,” she said quietly, and for the first time Keith detected the soft blur in her speech.
“You are from the South!” he exclaimed, as though it was a discovery.
“Yes—and you?”
“My boyhood began in Virginia—the negro was an old-time slave in our family.”
She glanced across at the black, now sitting up and eating voraciously.
“I thought he had once been a slave; one can easily tell that. I did not ask him to sit here because, if you do not object, we will eat here together. I have also been almost as long without food. It was so lonely here, and—and I hardly understood my situation—and I simply could not force myself to eat.”
He distinguished her words clearly enough, although she spoke low, as if she preferred what was said between them should not reach the ears of the negro, yet somehow, for the moment, they made no adequate impression on him. Like a famished wolf he began on the coarse fare, and for ten minutes hardly lifted his head. Then his eyes chanced to meet hers across the narrow table, and instantly the gentleman within him reawoke to life.
“I have been a perfect brute,” he acknowledged frankly, “with no thought except for myself. Hunger was my master, and I ask your forgiveness, Miss Maclaire.”
Her eyes smiled.