Sark faced outward as he slept.
The rifle lay on the blankets between his back and the wall, free of his touch except where his shoe-packed foot curled over the heel of the stock.
Blera had the rifle by the barrel, and slowly, with a motion so gentle as to be scarcely perceptible, she began to twist loose the butt.
She had nearly succeeded when she saw the twitching of muscles round Sark’s closed eyes.
Swiftly she released the weapon and with a lithe swing of her body stretched herself along the outer edge of the bunk. Her arms were about Sark’s neck, and her voice was whispering in his ear when he half awoke.
“Eric,” she whispered hurriedly, hysterically, “I’ve come back—stolen out of there while he slept. We got to go away—together. He was never—”
But Sark awakened fully.
“You cursed vampire!” he gritted. “Get off. Get away from me. I don’t want the touch of your hands. Aren’t you seeing you’re poison and pollution to me?”
He half arose on one knee, roughly thrusting her from the bunk, and even as he repulsed her, the touch of her arms brought the thrill of another day, a day when his hours had been full of dream and desire, of marvel and of miracle, when Blera had been a splendor and a vision to him and lain in honor by his side.
For a reeling moment he saw not this woman who was poison and pollution to him. His eyes were fixed, seer-like, upon the panels of those vanished days, upon the words and smiles and deeds and delights of another woman tapestried in golden story upon the snow-white curtain of the North, days before he had come into the companionship of Tom Bassett and discovered the love that passeth the love of woman.