As he led the horses to Roger’s stable she remembered that it must be after midnight. But the next day was Sunday. And then her morality had never been regulated by the position of bits of steel on a clock’s face.
He came back to her and led the way into the tent and lit a candle.
He took a warm coat off his pole and helped her into it, and put on his red sweater, and pulled a rug off his cot. He led the way to a hollow half-way up the side of the cliff where they could look down upon the surf. He sat down beside her and wrapped the rug about their feet and knees, took out his pipe and began to smoke. He forgot to offer her a cigarette.
She waited a little and then asked him for one. He came to her out of a far-away mood and looked at her almost in surprise. Then he was smitten with a quick remorse for his discourtesy.
“Lord! I’m sorry. Miss Carr, I’m behaving very badly. Why, I forgot you were there, that is, I knew you were there, but hang it, how can I say it?” His tone showed that he was less tragic than he had been when they started out from the hospital.
“You don’t have to say it. I understand,” she said eloquently. “You are really paying me a great compliment.”
He held up the rug enclosing them in an intimate snugness while she lit her cigarette. But his suffering had gone much too deep to be lightened all at once. As he smoked on he retreated from her into his own thoughts.
Valerie leaned back a little against a thick clump of rushes so that she could look at his figure bent forward, his hands clasped about his knees, his face turned from her sometimes staring straight out over the black sea, and sometimes raised to the sky. There was something
