Caius did not move; he did not know whether the scene
before him represented Satan with powerful grasp upon a soul that would
otherwise have passed into some more heavenly region, or whether it was
a wise and good man trying to save a woman from her own fanatical
folly. The latter seemed to be the case when he looked about him at the
beach, at the boats, at the lighthouse on the cliff above, with a
clothes-line near it, spread with flapping garments. When he looked, not
outward, but inward, and saw Josephine's vision of life, he believed he
ought to go forward and beat off the serpent from the dove.
The colloquy was not very long. Then O'Shea led Josephine's horse nearer
to Caius.
"Madame and my wife will go with ye," he said. "I've told the men to get
the boat out."
"I did not say that," moaned Josephine.
Her face was buried in her hands, and Caius remembered how those pretty
white hands had at one time beckoned to him, and at another had angrily
waved him away. Now they were held helplessly before a white face that
was convulsed with fear and shame and self-abandonment.
"There ain't no particular hurry," remarked O'Shea soothingly; "but
Mammy has packed up all in the houses that needs to go, and she'll bring
warm clothes and all by the time the boat's out, so there's no call for
madame to go back. It would be awful unkind to the girls to set them
crying; and"--this to Caius--"ye jist go and put up yer things as quick
as ye can.
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