You'll have to stay with me now for life. I am
ruined." They laughed happily.
"You are," he echoed her.
"Isn't it nice?"
"Nothing better could be invented."
She investigated the pitcher. "The last drop."
Lee Randon signalled for the waiter, but she stopped him; the strained
intensity of her face, the shining darkness of her eyes, set his heart
pounding.
* * * * *
They left for Cobra without even the formality of a telegraphed
announcement to Daniel Randon. Their compartment, in the middle of the
car, with the more casual open accommodations at either end, resolute
in its bare varnished coolness, indicated what degree of heat they
might expect in the interior. The progress of the train through the
length of the island was slow and irregular: Lee had a sense of
insecure tracks, of an insufficient attention to details of
transportation that required an endless, untiring oversight. Naturally
they slept badly; and the morning showed them a wide plain scattered
with royal palms which thickened in the distance. Such vast groves, Lee
thought, robbed them of the stateliness so impressive in parks and
cities. The landscape, tangled with lianas or open about massive and
isolated ceiba trees, was without the luxuriance of color he had
expected. It was evident that there had been no rain for a long period;
and the crowded growths, grey rather than green, were monotonous,
oppressive.
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