could live untroubled and learn to know each other.'
'It's perhaps in trouble that people get to know each other,' she suggested.
'Perhaps,' he said indifferently. 'At any rate, we would not have gone away from here with him; though I believe he would have come in eagerly enough, and ready for any service he could render. It's that fat man's nature—a delightful fellow. You would not come on the wharf that time I sent the shawl back to Mrs. Schomberg through him. He has never seen you.'
'I didn't know that you wanted anybody ever to see me,' she said.
He had folded his arms on his breast and hung his head.
'And I did not know that you cared to be seen as yet. A misunderstanding evidently. An honourable misunderstanding. But it does not matter now.'
He raised his head after a silence.
'How gloomy this forest has grown! Yet surely the sun cannot have set already.'
She looked round; and as if her eyes had just been opened, she perceived the shades of the forest surrounding her, not so much with gloom, but with a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility. Her heart sank in the engulfing stillness, at that moment she felt the nearness of death, breathing on her and on the man with her. If there had been a sudden stir of leaves, the crack of a dry branch, the faintest rustle, she would have screamed aloud. But she shook off the unworthy weakness. Such as she was, a fiddle-scraping girl picked up on the very threshold of infamy, she would try to rise above herself, triumphant and humble; and then happiness would burst on her like a torrent, flinging at her feet the man whom she loved.
Heyst stirred slightly.
'We had better be getting back, Lena, since we can't stay all night in the woods—or anywhere else, for that matter. We are the slaves of this infernal surprise which has been sprung on us by—shall I say fate?—your fate, or mine.'
It was the man who had broken the silence, but it was the woman who led the way. At the very edge of the forest she stopped, concealed by a tree. He joined her cautiously.
'What is it? What do you see, Lena?' he whispered.
She said that it was only a thought that had come into her head. She hesitated for a moment giving him over her shoulder a shining gleam in her grey eyes. She wanted to know whether this trouble, this danger, this evil, whatever it was, finding them out in their retreat, was not a sort of punishment.
'Punishment?' repeated Heyst. He could not understand what she meant. When she explained, he was still more surprised. 'A sort of retribution, from an angry Heaven?' he said in wonder. 'On us? What on earth for?'
He saw her pale face darken in the dusk. She had blushed. Her whispering flowed very fast. It was the way they lived together—that wasn't right, was it? It was a guilty life. For she had not been forced into it, driven, scared into it. No, no—she had come to him of her own free will, with her whole soul yearning unlawfully.
He was so profoundly touched that he could not speak for a moment. To conceal his trouble, he assumed his best Heystian manner.
'What? Are our visitors then messengers of morality, avengers of righteousness, agents of Providence? That's certainly an original view. How flattered they would be if they could hear you!'
'Now you are making fun of me,' she said in a subdued voice which broke suddenly.
'Are you conscious of sin?' Heyst asked gravely. She made no answer. 'For I am not,' he added; 'before Heaven, I am not!'
'You! You are different. Woman is the tempter. You took me up from pity. I threw myself at you.'
'Oh, you exaggerate, you exaggerate. It was not so bad as that,' he said playfully, keeping his voice steady with an effort.
He considered himself a dead man already, yet forced to pretend that he was alive for her sake, for her defence. He regretted that he had no Heaven to which he could recommend this fair, palpitating handful of ashes and dust—warm, living sentient his own—and exposed helplessly to insult, outrage, degradation, and infinite misery of the body.
She had averted her face from him and was still. He suddenly seized her passive hand.
'You will have it so?' he said. 'Yes? Well, let us then hope for mercy together.'
She shook her head without looking at him, like an abashed child.
'Remember,' he went on incorrigible with his delicate raillery, 'that hope is a Christian virtue, and surely you can't want all the mercy for yourself.'
Before their eyes the bungalow across the cleared ground stood bathed in a sinister light. An unexpected chill gust of wind made a noise in the tree-tops. She snatched her hand away and stepped out into the open; but before she had advanced more than three yards, she stood still and pointed to the west.
'Oh look there!' she exclaimed.
Beyond the headland of Diamond Bay, lying black on a purple sea, great masses of cloud stood piled up and bathed in a mist of blood. A crimson crack like an open wound zigzagged between them, with a piece of dark red sun showing at the bottom. Heyst cast an indifferent glance at the ill-omened chaos of the sky.
'Thunderstorm making up. We shall hear it all night, but it won't visit us, probably. The clouds generally gather round the volcano.'
She was not listening to him. Her eyes reflected the sombre and violent hues of the sunset.
'That does not look much like a sign of mercy,' she said slowly, as if to herself, and hurried on, followed by Heyst. Suddenly she stopped. 'I don't care. I would do more yet! And some day you'll forgive me. You'll have to forgive me!'
CHAPTER NINE
