The firm conviction of this speech filled Paul with a new kind of awe of her.
"Darling," he murmured, and yet, as he kissed her eyes, the specter of the past laid its cold finger upon his lips. He drew back. "Some day you may hate me."
"Paul, Paul! Stop!"
Her voice was fraught with fear.
"If we live the days will come when—I come to you a broken, spurned thing. I have no place among the men of my people. I am wild! Crazy! My tongue should be torn from me for telling you what I have. I have no right to tell—I have no right to love! And you of all women——Emily, there is something—that night on the Yakutat, I must tell you—we cannot——"
Her hand closed his lips.
"No, no, no, Paul. You mustn't. I know. There is nothing to tell me. There is no past to come between us. From the moment that I knew on the Cambodia that you were Paul Lavelle I knew the truth. There is no past. But there is a future, my darling—our future." She drew his head to her and kissed his eyes. "My fearless stars. For my faith's reward I ask only this: Your silence until I say you may speak. Promise."
"I promise," he answered, with a strange, indefinable hope burgeoning in his heart.
As he spoke the sun passed from the ports of the lounge and brought Paul Lavelle from his dreaming to the reality of a peril which he had too long forgotten. Emily read his thought.
"I will go forward and prepare our evening meal," she said. She kissed him and went out of the lounge, and at her going torment ruled his heart.