In his quiet voice a half-savage triumph made itself heard. This near-coming fate, that he believed inevitable, put away completely all claims of that world that lay behind him—shut out everything but their own individuality. Time had narrowed to a point; all landmarks were swept away.
Miss Berkeley's face had lost none of its whiteness; but the pallor was not of fear. The great eyes burned star-like, and the mouth was like iron. She looked up as his even tones fell on her ear. Something in his gaze fixed hers; through fearless, unveiled eyes, the soul looked straight out to his. What he saw there dazzled and blinded him. He caught her up to his heart suddenly and fiercely. His lips crushed hers in a long, clinging kiss, that seemed to drink up her very life. For them, the brightness that for others is dissipated over long years of the future, was concentrated into the single intense moment of the present—this one moment, that seemed to burst into bud and blossom, the fruition of a lifetime. The sky lifted away and poured down fuller floods of light; the air vibrated with strange, audible throbs. When he released her, she did not move away. Never again, though they lived out a century, could the past be quite what it had been before; through it they had come to this, the crowning perfection of their lives. Through the future would run the memory of a caress in which—she was not a woman who measured her gifts—she had dissolved all the hope and promise of that future for him. Desperation was no small element in the whirl. Only into the eternities could he carry the now pure and loyal. It had nothing to do with time; only through the shadow of the coming death had he attained to it.
The fancy that had always haunted him with her peculiar name and dainty presence, prompted the 'Marguerite!'
She was not a woman to whom people give pet names. A rested, loving smile gleamed over her face, and her lips sought his again.
'My darling!'
'Mine!' and then time drifted on, unbroken by the speech which would have jarred the new, perfect harmony. Neither thought—the life currents that had met so wildly and suddenly, left space in their full, disturbed flow, for just the one consciousness of delirious, satisfying love. While the fiery sunset paled, he held the little drenched figure close, her warm breath flowing across his cheek.
Out of the gathering dimness shoreward, came a hail. It struck him with an icy chill that death could never have brought. She raised her head, listening. The longing and temptation to hold her to his breast, and sink down through the green, curling waves, came back stronger than ever. Only so could he hope to keep her. That inexorable future of time reaching out to grasp him back again, would put them apart so hopelessly. His voice was hoarse—broken up with the heart wrench.
'Marguerite, will you die here with me, or go back again to the life that will separate us?'
She did not understand him. Why should she? Did she not love him, and he her? and what could come between them? For her a future burst suddenly into hope with that faint call. In it lay untried, unfathomable sources of happiness.
Another breathless kiss—this time crowded with the agony of a parting for him—and then, as the hail came again, nearer and more distinct, the white shawl, that still clung about her, floated in the air as a signal.