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Page 27
Some faint perception of that coarse fibre within her was breaking with
horror through her face. She held to his hands after he had separated
her from his person and held her off.
"All that you do still has its effect on me," said the man, gazing
sternly at her. "I love ye; but I despise myself for loving ye. This
morn I adored ye with reverence; this night you're as a bit o' that
earth."
Eva let go his hands and sat down on the ground. As he made his
preparations in the tent he could not help seeing with compassion how
abjectly her figure drooped. All its flexible proud lines, were suddenly
gone. She was dazed by his treatment and by the light in which he put
her trifling. She sat motionless until Adam came out with one of the
cots in his arms.
"I'm to sleep upon the hill in the pine woods to-night," said he. "Go
into the tent, and I'll fasten the flaps. You shan't be scared by
anything."
"Let me get in the boat and leave the island, if you can't breathe the
same air with me," said Eva. staggering up.
"No, I can't breathe the same air with ye to-night, but ye'll go into
the tent," said Adam, with authority.
"I'll not stay there," she rebelled. "I'll follow you. You don't know
what may be on this island."
"There can be nothing worse than what I've seen," said Adam; "and that's
done all the hairm it can do."
"Oh, Adam, are we both crazy?" the small creature burst out, weeping as
if her heart would break. "Don't go away and leave me so. I am not real
bad in my heart, I know I am not; and if you would be a little patient
with me and help me, I shall get over my silly ways. There is something
in me, you can depend upon, if I _did_ do that foolish thing. And my
mother didn't live long enough to train me, Adam; remember that. Won't
you please kiss me? My heart is breaking."
He put down the cot and took her by the shoulders, trembling as he did
so from head to foot:
"My wife, I belaive what you say. I'd give all the days remaining to me
if I could strain ye against my breast with the feeling I had this morn.
But there comes that sight. I never shall see the hill again, I never
shall see a spot of this island again, without seeing your mouth kissing
another man. Go into the tent. God knows I'd die before hairm should
come to you. But not to-night can I stay beside you. Or kiss you."
He carried her into the tent and put her on her bed. She had made all
the night-preparations herself, placing the pillows on both cots and
turning back the sun-sweetened blankets.
Adam left her sobbing, buttoned the tent-flaps outside, and placed a
barricade of kettles and pans which could not be touched without
disturbing him on the hill. Then, taking up his own bed, he marched off
through the ferns, edging his burden among dense boughs as he ascended.
When he had made the joints of his couch creak with many uneasy
turnings, had clinched at leaves, and started up to return to the tent,
only to check himself in the act as often as he started, he lost
consciousness in uneasy dreams rather than fell asleep.
He was smothering, and yet could not open his lips to gasp for a breath
of air. Then he was drowning: he gulped in vast sheets of water upon his
lungs. An alarm sounded from Eva's barricade. He heard the pans and
kettles clanging and her own voice in screams which pierced him, yet he
could not move. A nightmare of heat enveloped him; the smothering
element pouring upon his lungs was not water, but smoke; and he knew if
no effort of will could move his body to her rescue he must be perishing
himself.
After these brief sensations his existence was as blank as the empty
void outside the worlds, until his ears began to throb like drums, and
he felt water, like the tears he had shed in the morning, running all
over his face. Eva held him in her arms, and alternately kissed his head
and drenched it from the lake.
Moreover, he was in the boat, outside the bay, and their island glowed
like a furnace before his dazzled eyes.
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