In Secret

"Please listen. You're out of your mind," she said breathlessly, not struggling to free herself, but striving to twist both her arms around one of his.

"You hurt me," she whimpered. "Don't be brutal to me!"

"I've got to get you out of my way." He tried to fling her across the corridor into her own cabin, but she had fastened herself to him.

"Don't!" she panted. "Don't do anything to yourself—"

"Let go of me! Unclasp your arms!"

But she clung the more desperately and wound her limbs around his, almost tripping him.

"I WON'T give you up!" she gasped.

"What do you care?" he retorted hoarsely, striving to tear himself loose. "I want to get some rest—somewhere!"

"You're hurting! You're breaking my arm! Kay! Kay! what are you doing to me?" she wailed.

Something—perhaps the sound of his own name falling from her lips for the first time—checked his mounting frenzy. She could feel every muscle in his body become rigidly inert.

"Kay!" she whispered, fastening herself to him convulsively. For a full minute she sustained his half-insane stare, then it altered, and her own eyes slowly closed, though her head remained upright on the rigid marble of her neck.

The crisis had been reached: the tide of frenzy was turning, had turned, was already ebbing. She felt it, was conscious that he also had become aware of it. Then his grasp slackened, grew lax, loosened, and almost spent. She ventured to unwind her limbs from his, to relax her stiffened fingers, unclasp her arms.

It was over. She could scarcely stand, felt blindly for support, rested so, and slowly unclosed her eyes.

"I've had to fight very hard for you," she whispered. "But I think I've won."

He answered with difficulty.

"Yes—if you want the dog you fought for."

"It isn't what I want, Kay."

"All right, I guess I can face it through—after this…. But I don't know why you did it."

"I do."

"Do you? Don't you know I'm not a man, but a beast? And there are half a hundred million real men to replace me—to do what you and the country expect of real men."

"What may be expected of them I expect of you. Kay, I've made a good fight for you, haven't I?"

He turned his quenched eyes on her. "From gutter to hospital, from hospital to sanitarium, from sanitarium to ship," he said in a colourless voice. "Yes, it was—a—good—fight."

"What a Calvary!" she murmured, looking at him out of clear, sorrowful eyes. "And on your knees, poor boy!"

"You ought to know. You have made every station with me—on your tender bleeding knees of a girl!" He choked, turned his head swiftly; and she caught his hand. The break had come.

"Oh, Kay! Kay!" she said, quivering all over, "I have done my bit and you are cured! You know it, don't you? Look at me, turn your head." She laid her slim hand flat against his tense cheek but could not turn his face. But she did not care; the palm of her hand was wet. The break had come. She drew a deep, uneven breath, let go his hand.

"Now," she said, "we can understand each other at last—our minds are rational; and whether in accord or conflict they are at least in contact; and mine isn't clashing with something disordered and foreign which it can't interpret, can't approach."

He said, not turning toward her: "You are kind to put it that way…. I think self-control has returned—will-power—all that…. I won't-betray you—Miss Erith."

"YOU never would, Mr. McKay. But I—I've been in terror of what has been masquerading as you."

"I know…. But whatever you think of such a—a man—I'll do my bit, now. I'll carry on—until the end."

"I will too! I promise you."

He turned his head at that and a mirthless laugh touched his wet eyes and drawn visage:

"As though you had to promise anybody that you'd stick! You! You beautiful, magnificent young thing—you superb kid—"

Her surprise and the swift blaze of colour in her face silenced him.

After a moment, the painful red still staining his face, he muttered something about dressing.

He watched her turn and enter her room; saw that she had closed her door-something she had not dared do heretofore; then he went into his own room and threw himself down on the bunk, shaking in every nerve.

For a long while, preoccupied with the obsession for self-destruction, he lay there face downward, exhausted, trying to fight off the swimming sense of horror that was creeping over him again….. Little by little it mounted like a tide from hell…. He struggled to his feet with the unuttered cry of a dreamer tearing his throat. An odd sense of fear seized him and he dressed and adjusted his clumsy life-suit. For the ship was in the danger zone, now, and orders had been given, and dawn was not far off. Perhaps it was already day! he could not tell in his dim cabin.

And after he was completely accoutred for the hazard of the Hun-cursed seas he turned and looked down at his bunk with the odd idea that his body still lay there—that it was a thing apart from himself—something inert, unyielding, corpse-like, sprawling there in a stupor—something visible, tangible, taking actual proportion and shape there under his very eyes.

He turned his back with a shudder and went on deck. To his surprise the blue lights were extinguished, and corridor and saloon were all rosy with early sunlight.

Blue sky, blue sea, silver spindrift flying and clouds of silvery gulls—a glimmer of Heaven from the depths of the pit—a glimpse of life through a crack in the casket—and land close on the starboard bow! Sheer cliffs, with the bonny green grass atop all furrowed by the wind—and the yellow-flowered broom and the shimmering whinns blowing.

"Why, it's Scotland," he said aloud, "it's Glenark Cliffs and the Head of Strathlone—my people's fine place in the Old World—where we took root—and—O my God! Yankee that I am, it looks like home!"

The cape of a white fleece cloak fluttered in his face, and he turned and saw Miss Erith at his elbow.

Yellow-haired, a slender, charming thing in her white wind-blown coat, she stood leaning on the spray-wet rail close to his shoulder.

And with him it was suddenly as though he had known her for years—as though he had always been aware of her beauty and her loveliness—as though his eyes had always framed her—his heart had always wished for her, and she had always been the sole and exquisite tenant of his mind.

"I had no idea that we were off Scotland," he said—"off Strathlone Head—and so close in. Why, I can see the cliff-flowers!"

She laid one hand lightly on his arm, listening; high and heavenly sweet above the rushing noises of the sea they heard the singing of shoreward sky-larks above the grey cliff of Glenark.

He began to tremble. "That nightmare through which I've struggled," he began, but she interrupted:

"It is quite ended, Kay. You are awake. It is day and the world's before you." At that he caught her slim hand in both of his:

"Eve! Eve! You've brought me through death's shadow! You gave me back my mind!"

She let her hand rest between his. At first he could not make out what her slightly moving lips uttered, and bending nearer he heard her murmur: "Beside the still waters." The sea had become as calm as a pond.

And now the transport was losing headway, scarcely moving at all. Forward and aft the gun-crews, no longer alert, lounged lazily in the sunshine watching a boat being loaded and swung outward from the davits.