"I'm thinking so many things," Beth broke out again. "I'm glad it's a still day for one thing, and not freezing cold. The cold would have numbed us, and we should have been swept off our feet if there had been any waves. I want to ask you so many things. Why did you make that figure on the sand?"
"I want to be a sculptor," he said; "but my people object, and they won't let me have the proper materials to model in, so I model in anything."
The water was almost up to Beth's waist. She had to turn and cling to him to keep her footing. She hid her face on his shoulder, and they stood so some time. The water rose above her waist. Alfred was head and shoulders taller than she was. He realised that she would be covered first.
"I must hold her up somehow," he muttered.
Beth raised her head. "Alfred," she began, "we're neither of us cowards, are we? You are hating to die, I can see, but you're not going to make an exhibition of yourself to the elements; and I'm hating it, too—I'm horribly anxious—and the cold makes me sob in my breath as the water comes up. It is like dying by inches from the feet up; but while my head is alive, I defy death to make me whimper."
"Do you despair, then?" he exclaimed, as if there had been some safeguard in her certainty.
"I have no knowledge at this moment," she answered. "I am in suspense. But that is nothing. The things that have come to me like that on a sudden positively have always been true, however much I might doubt and question beforehand. I did know at that moment that we should not be drowned; but I don't know it now. My spirit can't grasp the idea, though, of being here in this comfortable body talking to you one moment, and the next being turned out of house and home into eternity alone."
"Not alone," he interrupted, clasping her closer. "I'll hold you tight through all eternity."
Beth looked up at him, and then they kissed each other frankly, and forgot their danger for a blissful interval.
They were keeping their foothold with difficulty now. The last heave of the tide came up to Beth's shoulder, and took her breath away. Had it not been for the support of the cliff behind them, they could not have kept their position many minutes. But the cliff itself was a danger, for the sea was eating into it, and might bring down another mass of it at any moment. The agony of death, the last struggle with the water, had begun.