"I am sleepy," she murmured. "Almost dead for sleep...."
"Sh! I can't talk any more. I can't think; I can't move; I can scarcely breathe. Whether they find us in the morning or not ... it doesn't matter to me now.... You have been good to me; be good to me still. And ... good-night, Babe Deveril ... Gentleman!"
He saw her, dimly, nestle down, cuddling her cheek against her arm, drawing up her knees a little, snuggling into the very arms of mother earth, like a baby finding its warm place against its mother's breast. He sat down and slowly made himself a cigarette, and forgot for a long time to light it, lost in his thoughts as he stared at her and listened to her quiet breathing. He knew the moment that she went to sleep. And in his heart of hearts he marvelled at her and called her "a dead-game little sport." She, of a beauty which he in all of his light adventurings found incomparable, had ventured with him, a man unknown to her, into the depths of these solitudes and had never, for a second, evinced the least fear of him. True, danger drove; and yet danger always lay in the hands of a man, her sex's truest friend and greatest foe. In his hands reposed her security and her undoing. And yet, knowing all this, as she must, she lay down and sighed and went to sleep. And her last word, ingenuous and yet packed to the brim with human understanding, still rang in his ears.
"It's worth it," he decided, his eyes lingering with her gracefully abandoned figure. "The whole damn thing, and may the devil whistle through his fingers until his fires burn cold! And she's mine, and I'll make her mine and keep her mine until the world goes dead. And my friend, Wilfred Deveril, if you've ever said anything in your life, you've said it now!"
Glancing sunlight, striking at him through a nest of tumbled boulders upon the ridge, woke Babe Deveril. He sat up sharply, stiff and cold and confused, wondering briefly at finding himself here upon the mountainside. Lynette was already sitting up, a huddling unit of discomfort, her arms about her upgathered knees, her hair tousled, her clothing torn, her eyes showing him that, though she had slept, she, too, had awaked shivering and unrested. And yet, as he gathered his wits, she was striving to smile.