alf savage in
correspondence with a savage environment.

Then came moments of exhaustion when he could not believe it. Closing
his eyes he called up the placid life that was to have been his and
Susan's, and could not think but that it still must be. Like a child
he clung to his hope, to the belief that something would intervene and
give her back to him; not he, he was unable to, but something that
stood for justice and mercy. All his life he had abided by the law,
walked uprightly, done his best. Was he to be smitten now through no
fault of his own? It was all a horrible dream, and presently there
would be an awakening with Susan beside him as she had been in the
first calm weeks of their betrothal. The sweetness of those days
returned to him with the intolerable pang of a fair time, long past and
never to come again. He threw his head back as if in a paroxysm of
pain. It could not be and yet in his heart he knew it was true. In
the grip of his torment he thought of the God that watching over Israel
slumbered not nor slept. With his eyes on the implacable sky he tried
to pray, tried to drag down from the empty gulf of air the help that
would bring back his lost happiness.

At Susan's first waking movement he started and turned his head toward
her. She saw him, averted her face, and began the preparations for the
meal. He lay watching her and he knew that her avoidance of his glance
was intentional. He also saw that her manner of preoccupied bustle was
affected. She was pale, her face set in hard lines. When she spoke
once to Daddy John her voice was unlike itself, hoarse and throaty, its
mellow music gone.

They gathered and took their places in silence, save for the old man,
who tried to talk, but meeting no response gave it up. Between the
three others not a word was exchanged. A stifling oppression lay on
them, and they did not dare to look at one another. The girl found it
impossible to swallow and taking a piece of biscuit from her mouth
threw it into the sand.

The air was sultry, light whisps of mist lying low over the plain. The
weight of these vaporous films seemed to rest on them heavy as the
weight of water, and before the meal was finished, Susan, overborne by
a growing dread and premonition of tragedy, rose and left her place,
disappearing round a buttress of the rock. Courant stopped eating and
looked after her, his head slowly moving as his eye followed her. To
anyone watching i