"Here," he said clumsily, when all was ready, offering her matches. "You light it, please--for luck."
Their fingers touched as she took the matches. Something thumped in his breast, and a door opened in the chambers of his understanding, letting in light.
Kneeling at the base of the pyre, she struck a match and applied it to a quantity of tinder-dry excelsior. The stuff caught instantly, puffing into a brilliant patch of blaze; she rose and stood back, _en silhouette_, delicately poised at attention, waiting to see that her work was well done. He could not take his gaze from her.
So what he had trifled and toyed with, fought with and prayed against, doubted and questioned, laughed at and cried down, was sober, painful fact. Truth, heart-rending to behold in her stark, shining beauty, had been revealed to him in that moment of brushing finger-tips, and he had looked in her face and known his unworthiness; and he trembled and was afraid and ashamed....
Spreading swiftly near the ground, the flames mounted as quickly, with snappings and cracklings, excavating in the darkness an arena of reddish radiance.
The girl retreated to his side, returning the matches.
A tongue of flame shot up from the peak of the pyre, and a column of smoke surpassed it, swinging off to leeward in great, red-bosomed volutes and whorls picked out with flying regiments of sparks.
"You'd think they couldn't help understanding that it's a signal of distress."
"You would think so. I hope so. God knows I hope so!"
There was a passion in his tones to make her lift wondering eyes to his.
"Why do you say that--that way? We should be thankful to be safe--alive. And we're certain to get away before long."
"I'm sorry. I'd been thinking clearly; for the first time, I believe, since I woke up."
"You. I was considering you alone. It isn't right that you should be in this fix. I'd give my right hand to remedy it!"
"But I'm not distressed. It isn't altogether pleasant, but it can't be helped and might easily have been worse."
"And still I can't help feeling, somehow, the wretched injustice of it to you. I want to protest--to do something to mend matters."
"But since you can't"--she laughed in light mockery, innocent of malice--"since we're doing our best, let's be philosophical and sit down over there and watch to see if there's any answer to our signal."