It was blindingly intense, and when his senses cleared he knew that she
was gone. He felt as if he had awakened from a night full of dreams more
vivid than life--dreams which left him too weak to cope with reality.
For a time he dared not move. He was feeling for himself like a man who
fumbles his way down a dark passage dangerous with obstructions. At last
it was as if his hand touched the knob of a door; he swung it open,
entered a room full of dazzling light--himself. He shrank back from it;
closed his eyes against what he might see.
All he knew, then, was an overpowering will to see her. He turned, inch
by inch, little degree by degree, knowing that if, when he turned, he
looked into her eyes, the end would rush upon them, overwhelm them,
carry them along like straws on the flooding river. At last his head was
turned; he looked.
She lay on her back, smiling as she slept. One arm hung down from the
bunk and the graceful fingers trailed, palm up, on the floor, curling a
little, as if she had just relaxed her grasp on something. And down past
her shoulder, half covering the whiteness of her arm, fled the torrent
of brown hair, with the firelight playing through it like a sunlit mist.
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