A Divinity Shapes

"I am afraid. Where are you?"

"Here!" He hastened to her side. As he came up she touched his face with her hand timorously. He caught the wayward fingers in his own and held them, drawing quite close to her. "It's all right," he said.

"Will they come soon?"

"I hope not--I mean, yes; it must be morning."

"I loathe the dark," she sighed. Presently her head dropped over against his shoulder and she was asleep again.

"I don't give a damn if they never come," thought Truxton King, intoxicated with bliss.

Afraid to move for fear of disturbing her, he sat there for an hour or more his back twisted and uncomfortable, but never so resolute. He would not have moved for all the world.

All this time his brain was working like mad in the new-found desire to perform miracles for the sake of this lovely, unattainable creature. Was there no way to foil these triumphant conspirators? He was forgetting the Prince, the horrors of the 26th; he was thinking only of saving this girl from the fate that Marlanx had in store for her. Vos Engo may have had the promise, but what could it profit him if Marlanx had the girl?

"I've got about as much chance as a snowball," he reflected, courage and decision growing stronger each moment. "I might just as well die one way as another. If I could only catch 'em napping for a minute, I might turn the trick. God, that would be--" he was lost in ecstatic contemplation of the glory that such an event would bring.