She was whiter, more emaciated than when they sighted the
_Fomalhaut_. There had been a crisis that they had not expected in
the relinquishment of their will-powers.... Yet he saw how perfectly
her face was fashioned.... Her hand came up to him, warm from the
child, the sleeve falling back to her shoulder--held toward him, palm
upward. As he took it, all strangeness and embarrassment left him, and
he was something that he had not been for five years, something from
the Unknowable. But that was not all. He looked into her eyes and met
something untellably familiar there.
A most memorable moment to Bellair.
* * * * *
They were on deck together in the afternoon, the American doctor
helping them. They heard sacred music--as he walked between them aft.
They reached the rail of the promenade overlooking the main-deck.... A
service was being intoned in German. Passengers and crew were below,
and in the midst--leaded and sewn in canvas, in the cover of a flag----
The sound that came from the woman was not to be interpreted. She
turned and left them. Bellair would have followed but he felt a
courtesy due the Doctor, who had arranged for them not to miss the
ceremony. Perhaps he had held the ceremony until they could leave the
cabin. Yet Bellair had already turned away.
“Good God----” said the American. “You people have got me stopped. I
thought this was a trinity outfit--that we picked up.”
Bellair took his hand. “It was--but our friend left us.”
The Doctor glanced at him curiously, and pointed down to the body
already upon the rail. “I suppose _that_ has nothing to do with him?”
he remarked.
“Not now--not to watch,” said Bellair.
“I’ll understand you sometime,” the other added. “Go to her. You’ll
probably find her waiting for you forward.”
* * * * *
Bellair lay in his berth that night, the open door between, and he
thought of that first real look that had passed between them. “I’m not
just right yet from the open boat,” he reflected. “I’m all let down
from starvation, a bit wild with dreams and visions, but I saw old joys
there and old tragedies, and mountains and deserts and--most of all,
partings. I wonder what I’ve got to do with them all? It seemed to me
that I belonged to some of those partings--as if I had hungered with
her before and belonged to her now--and yet----”
Fleury came into his thoughts. “They were certainly great together. It
seemed to me that I did not belong when they were together; and yet,
this morning as I looked down at her--well, something of expectancy was
there----”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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