"I have no pain," she said, answering his protest. "I speak the truth. I wish to be out in the night—with you."
After the first step or two Emily walked freely and, indeed, the pain of her burns had passed away. The while Lavelle knelt to make a seat for her she stood sweeping the heavens with her luminous eyes. Across the northern sky a large star, falling, burst upon her vision.
"See!" she exclaimed, and then, turning toward him, she repeated Calpurnia's words to Cæsar:
"'When beggars die there are no comets seen;
The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes!'"
It was a night made for life and love and the joys of living—not death; a night to set the soul singing in gladness of being. It seemed to have garnered the uttermost spaces of their brightest jewels to bedeck its violet cope and make it the harder for this man and woman to say farewell to mortality.
Save in the intervals when Paul went to replenish the fire he sat at Emily's side, and together they watched and listened to the majestic travailing of the weariless, pitiless deep.
It was not far from midnight when the sea tore away half of the meadow and the palm tree. This bit of earth floated in their sight for but a breath. It was; then it was not. Where it had been was a patch of leaping, roiling waters, white-fanged like wolves at a kill.
Emily put out a hand and took one of Paul's.
"The end—it will come—like that—quickly," she whispered. "I will—will not be afraid—I am sure—if you will let me hold your hand."
Paul Lavelle could make no answer save pressing the gentle hand in both of his. It was sufficient to comfort her. After a long silence she asked: