"Can you see your wrist-watch?"
"Yes. It's after midnight."
The girl prayed silently for dawn. The man, grim, alert, awaited events, clutching his partly emptied pistols. He had not yet told her that they were partly empty. He did not know whether to tell her. After a while he made up his mind.
"Yellow-hair?"
"Yes, dear Kay."
His lips went dry; he found difficulty in speaking: "I've—I've undone you. I've bitten the hand that saved me, your slim white hand, I'm afraid. I'm afraid I've destroyed you, Yellow-hair."
"How, Kay?"
"My pistols are half empty. … Unless dawn comes quick—"
Again one of his pistols flashed its crimson streak across the blackness and a man began scrambling and thrashing and screaming down there in the whinns. For a little while Miss Erith crouched beside McKay in silence. Then he felt her light touch on his arm:
"I've been thinking.",