Marie held the paper in her hand, looking upon it as though she were crystal gazing, using it as a magnet to focus her own multitudinous emotions. Before her stood a man that was like a Greek god--the man who had twice saved her life; though the saving of her life, while it would have wakened feelings of deep gratitude, could not have filled her soul with the passionate yearning that was there--the surging soul warmth that submerges everything.
The man was like a child. Words utterly failed to shape themselves into a fitting coherence for utterance. He stepped to the wall and swung the little Ganesha panel, peering vacantly into the dark passage. He came back and gazed out into the hall.
"I want to tell you something----" The girl's voice startled him as though he had been struck; his nerves were frightful. "I want to tell you," she said again, a wan smile striving to master her trembling lips, "why I didn't give up this paper on the trail to-day."
"I understand," he interrupted; "it would not have cleared you."
"No; Captain Swinton would have thought that I had given it up under compulsion. But if I had lost it, all I have gone through would have been for nothing. That's what frightened me so when Doctor Boelke discovered I had it. I did wrong in keeping it; I was selfish."
The girl's tensed nerves were being slacked by her words; expression was easing the tightened coils as the striking of a clock unwinds the spring; the relief was loosening tears; they flooded the great dark eyes, and one had fallen on the paper, for an instant like a pearl before it was absorbed.
This trivial thing was a power that swept away the bondage of shyness that held the giant. He put his hand on the girl's shoulder; his voice was trembling. "Marie," he said, "I must speak--something. Don't mind, colleen, if you can't understand what I say, for I feel just like a boy at home in Ireland. I'm just mad with love for you; I can't live without you. All my life I've been alone. I love beautiful things--birds and trees and flowers and animals--and I've starved here, where all is treachery and work--nothing but just work."
It was a torrent, words trembling from the lips of a man whose soul was on fire, and the blue eyes had turned deep like rich sapphires.