"Come, hurry," she whispered, tugging at him. "Come, dear boy. I won't
leave you. Quickly. You saw it burning. They're all dead. It's no use.
We must live. We must live, darling."
She was right, somehow; there was no power to confute her. He must come
with her, or run back, useless, into the ring of swords and flames. She
and life were in the boat; ashore, a friend cut off beyond reach, an
impossible duty, and death. His eyes, dull and fixed in the smoky
lantern-light, rested for an age on the knotted sarong. It meant
nothing; then in a flash, as though for him all light of the eyes had
concentrated in a single vision, it meant everything. The colored
cloth--rudely painted in the hut of some forgotten mountaineer--held
all her treasure and her heart, the things of this world. She must go
with those. It was fitting. She was beautiful--in all her fear and
disorder, still more beautiful. She went with life, departing into a
dream. This glossy gunwale, polished by bare feet, was after all the
sole reality, a shining line between life and death.
"Then I must die," he groaned, and wrenched his hands away from that
perilous boundary.
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