"Why are you not afraid?"
"I don't know," he answered simply, "unless it is because I can't believe—that a marvelous creation like mankind stops—with what we call death. I can't believe that wondrous beings—like you—and Chang, capable of the sublimest thoughts and impulses—come and go and are no more. Rather I think that what we are facing is 'Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep.'"
Nor was Emily conscious of her hand clasping Paul Lavelle's with love's tightness in its pressure.
"My father believed as you," she began, only to stop short as she felt him start. She had ever been on her guard against speaking of her people to this man, for she knew his sensitiveness as to the past. But once had she made reference to the tragedy which embraced her life and his. That was in the boat when she had assailed him to save Rowgowskii from drowning. Now she knew not what else to say.
"Miss Granville," he said presently.
"No, no, please don't!" she protested. "Not that tone; not that distance. Call me friend, comrade—just as you have been doing these past few days. Call me Emily. It would please me; it would sound—like home to—to hear somebody call me by the old name once more."
"Emily," Lavelle went on, "I should like you to know what happened that night on the Yakutat—the truth. If you——"
"No," she interrupted him. "If I say to you that—that I do not wish you to tell me, you will not misunderstand?"
"As you wish," he answered, but there was a chill in his voice.
"No, no!" she cried. "You do not have to tell me what happened. Don't you understand? I know. I know you to be brave—and true and upstanding. I know you acted as only one unafraid—fearless as you are, could have acted. And I thank God that he has given it to me to know you and—to understand!"