Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/147

 “I hope she doesn’t think,” he said to the boiling surf below, “that she fooled me any with those kisses. It’s all right. She’s welcome to my name. She’s welcome to her ring—if she buys it herself—and her certificate. I didn’t see her very well, but what I did see didn’t look like a fast woman.

“I’ll say that for her. And she didn’t act as if she were used to calling on other people to shoulder many of her burdens. God knows she wasn’t afraid for her body, or she wouldn’t have been on this rock close to midnight in this storm; not afraid with physical fear; but I suppose it’s the mental strain that gets people the worst. I suppose it’s mental fear or nerve strain, or whatever you might call it, that’s been eating me for the past two years. It’s not that I’m afraid of death physically. God knows I’ve seen enough of it so that I can take my medicine as I saw thousands of boys take theirs! It’s just that since I am alive, since I am breathing, since there is the ghost of a possibility that I might have a slim fighting chance, I hate standing still and watching myself going out by the inch. And the reason I hate the going is because I’ve never lived; I’ve never had the things that, to a man, constitute real life, and I want a taste of life! I know just enough about the sky and the sea and the earth to want to get on the tree job and run it down as I’ve always intended.”

Then, for a time, long past the stipulated time, Jamie sat and watched the gradual clearing of the sky, the calming of the sea. It was not long before he could see the stars again, and some way a star always was connected in