They did not care. They did not even laugh at it. They
would do that later when they had returned to the plane where life had
regained its familiar aspect.
Silently, hand in hand, they walked between the low bushes and across
the whitened patches of sandy soil. When the smoke was gone the pool
with the lone tree guided them, the surface now covered with a glaze of
gold. A deep content lay upon them. The shared peril had torn away a
veil that hung between them and through which they had been dodging to
catch glimpses of one another. Susan's pride in her ascendency was
gone. She walked docilely beside the man who, in the great moment, had
not failed. She was subdued, not by the recent peril, but by the fact
that the slave had shown himself the master. David's chance had come,
but the moment was too completely beautiful, the sudden sense of
understanding too lovely for him to break it with words. He wanted to
savor it, to take joy of its delicate sweetness. It was his
voluptuousness to delight in it, not brush its bloom away with a
lover's avowal. He was the idealist, moving in an unexpectedly
realized dream, too exquisite for words to intrude upon.
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