Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/137

 Just how that would have worked out, Jamie never knew because at the instant that his hand crept higher to work the blinding hair from his eyes, a long, low flash of lightning struck the breast of the ocean and for one instant lighted the rock like day. In that instant Jamie saw the white face and the big, wide eyes of a woman, eyes that he would remember while remembrance remained with him, a face that by no possibility could he ever forget. The sharp gasp of astonishment at his presence there, where any one accustomed to the rock might well have supposed there would be no one, his quick ear told him came from a woman accustomed to self-control. She had not screamed. She had not jumped. It was merely the catching of a breath.

Jamie was in a measure prepared. He had been trying to plan something. He was not taken unaware as she was. What he had meant to say, what he had thought would be a wise thing to say, never was uttered.

What he heard himself saying was: “Don’t be startled! What hurts you so? Let me help you.”

Then a voice that was going to take a place in Jamie’s mentality along with the eyes and the face-a deep, rich contralto voice with a touching quaver of pathos through it, a voice shaken with emotion and accented with tones native to his ears-answered him: “Why did you come here?”

Jamie replied: “Very possibly for the same reason you did.”

The voice answered: “Oh!”