“So will I,” said she.
There was a cozy fireside moment as they took their lights from the same match. When he threw the match overboard he said:
“Like a human life, eh? A little spark between dark and dark.”
He was surprised at stumbling into rhyme, and apologized. But she said:
“Do you know, I rather like that. It reminds me of a poem about a rain-storm––Russell Lowell’s, I fancy; it told of a flock of sheep scampering down a dusty road and clattering across a bridge and back to the dust again. He said it was like human life, ‘a little noise between two silences.’”
“H’m!” was the best Davidge could do. But the agony of the brevity of existence seized them both by the hearts, and their hearts throbbed and bled like birds crushed in the claws of hawks. Their hearts had such capabilities of joy, such songs in them, such love and longing, such delight in beauty––and beauty was so beautiful, so frequent, so thrilling! Yet they could spend but a glance, a sigh, a regret, a gratitude, 112 and then their eyes were out, their ears still, their lips cold, their hearts dust. The ache of it was beyond bearing.
“Let’s walk. I’m cold again,” she whispered.
He felt that she needed the sense of hurry, and he went so fast that she had to run to keep up with him. There seemed to be some comfort in the privilege of motion for its own sake; motion was life; motion was godhood; motion was escape from the run-down clock of death.
Back and forth they kept their promenade, till her body refused to answer the whips of restlessness. Her brain began to shut up shop. It would do no more thinking this night.
She stumbled toward the taxicab. Davidge lifted her in, and she sank down, completely done. She fell asleep.