“At least it is dry here!  There is wood, but I have no way to make fire.”

“I am not cold.”

“Sit here, upon this ledge.  Alexander and I cleared it and widened it.”

She sat down.  When he spoke of Alexander she thought of Alexander, without unkindness, without comparing, without compunction, a thought colorless and simple, as of one whom she had known and liked a long time ago.  Indeed, it might be said that she had little here with which to reproach herself.  She had been honest—­had not said “Take!” where she could not fulfil....  And now the laird of Glenfernie was like a form met long ago—­long ago!  It seemed so long and far away that she could not even think of him as suffering.  As she might leave a fugitive memory, so she turned her mind from him.

Ian thought of Alexander ... but he looked, by the lightning’s lamp, at the woman opposite.

She was not the first that he had desired, but he desired now with unwonted strength.  He did not know why—­he did not analyze himself nor the situation—­but all the others seemed gathered up in her.  She was fair to him, desirable!...  He thirsted, quite with the mortal honesty of an Arab, day and night and day again without drink in the desert, and the oasis palms seen at last on the horizon.  In his self-direction thitherward he was as candid, one-pointed, and ruthless as the Arab might be.  He had no deliberate thought of harm to the woman before him—­as little as the Arab would have of hurting the well whose cool wave seemed to like the lip touch.  Perhaps he as little stopped to reason as would have done the Arab.  Perhaps he had no thought of deeply injuring a friend.  If there were two desert-traversers, or more than two, making for the well, friendship would not hold one back, push another forward.  Race!—­and if the well was but to one, then let fate and Allah approve the swiftest!  Under such circumstances would not Alexander outdo him if he might?  He was willing to believe so.  Glenfernie said himself that the girl did not know if she cared for him.  If, then, the well was not for him, anyway?... Where was the wrong? Now Ian believed in his own power and easy might and pleasantness and, on the whole, goodness—­believed, too, in the love of Alexander for him, love that he had tried before, and it held. And if he made love to Elspeth Barrow need old Steadfast ever know it? And, finally, and perhaps, unacknowledged to himself, from the first, he turned to that cabinet of his heart where was the vial made of pride, that held the drop of malice.  The storm continued.  They looked through the portcullis made by the briers upon a world of rain.  The lightning flashed, the thunder rolled; in here was the castle hold, dim and safe.  They were as alone as in a fairy-tale, as alone as though around the cave beat an ocean that boat had never crossed.

They sat near each other; once or twice Ian, rising, moved to and fro in the cave, or at the opening looked into the turmoil without.  When he did this her eyes followed him.  Each, in every fiber, had consciousness of the other.  They were as conscious of each other as lion and lioness in a desert cave.