On the third night following Manteo’s return, Vytal and Marlowe were together in the secluded hut of their choosing. The cabin contained but one room, scantily furnished by two pallets of straw, a rough-hewn table, a couple of chairs, and other bare necessities of a home’s interior.
The weather was foul, the sky lowering. Occasionally a gleam of distant lightning shot through chinks in the hovel wall, straight across Vytal’s face, as, deep in thought, he sat beside the table. A tempestuous wind, shrieking like a shrew in heated brawl, seemed bent on extinguishing a cresset which had been thrust between the logs, but succeeded only in causing the light to flare uncertainly, as though the torch were being brandished aloft by an unseen hand.
As the gale increased, Marlowe, who had been half reclining on his pallet in a dark corner, rose and peered out through the hole in the door which he had made with the skull-like stone. The aperture, jagged and splintered at the edges, had purposely been left uncovered, as the hut’s original windows were still barred.
“I’ faith, ’tis a murky night,” said Marlowe, striving to determine the outlines of trees against the sky. “This wind’s a very nightmare to the woods.” He turned slowly and sat down at the table. “’Tis well that most of the colonists have built and occupied their homes. Troth, I pity them who sleep aboard the ships at anchor.”
Vytal inclined his head, and Christopher smiled comprehendingly. Eleanor, at least, was safe and unharassed—hence Vytal’s unconcern. Mistress Dare, of whom lately they had seen nothing, was housed in the governor’s new-built dwelling, beyond the strip of woodland whose high outline Marlowe had just found indeterminate between this cabin and the town.
But Gyll Croyden was still on board the Admiral. Marlowe remembered this, and his thoughts pictured vividly the two women in contrast—one, as he supposed, all content and comfort; the other at the mercy of every wind and wave that crossed her life.
Listlessly he toyed with a sheet of paper on the table, and, picking up a pen, dipped it in an ink-horn at his side.
“Comparisons are odious,” he wrote, slowly, little dreaming that the words, born of that fleeting contrast in his mind, were to become proverbial the world over. But, on raising his eyes to Vytal’s face, he found in the deep expression none of the odiousness of comparison, for in his friend’s thoughts there was only one woman to be considered.
Again the poet smiled, as one who half gladly, yet half sadly, understands, and once more his reflections shaped themselves in words. He wrote, carelessly, “Who ever lov’d that lov’d not at first sight?” and, letting fall the pen, handed the paper to Vytal. The soldier read and re-read, but made no response whatever, for, even as his eyes were raised from the writing, his look changed suddenly, and Marlowe, with astonishment, saw him gazing transfixedly toward the battered door.
As a dream comes in the night-time to recall the thoughts of day, so a face, seemingly visionary, appeared now to the two men. The jagged edge of the door’s orifice framed it uncertainly, but the cresset’s light fell across the features in vivid revelation.