Renny and Alayne, their fingers still locked, stood looking upward at the flame-colored smoke that rose toward the sky in billows endlessly pursuing each other, while, after the crashing of a log, a shower of sparks sprang upward like a swarm of fire-flies. In the glare their faces were transfigured to a strange beauty, yet this beauty was lost, not registered on any consciousness, for they dared not look at each other.
"I have been watching two of those sparks," she said, "sparks that flew up, and then together, and then apart again, till out of sight—like us."
"I won't have it so. Not till out of sight, extinguished—if you mean that. No, I am not hopeless. There's something for us besides separation. You couldn't believe that we'll never meet again, could you?"
"Oh, we may meet again—that is, if you ever come to New York. By that time your feelings may have changed."
"Changed! Alayne, why should you want to spoil our last moments together by suggesting that?"
"I suppose, being a woman, I just wanted to hear you deny it. You've no idea what it is to be a woman. I used to think in my old life that we were equal: men and women. Since I've lived at Jalna, it seems to me that women are only slaves."
Someone had thrown an armful of brushwood on the fire. For a space it died down to a subdued but threatening crackle. In the dimness they turned to each other.
"Slaves?" he repeated. "Not to us."
"Well—to the life you create, to the passions you arouse in us. Oh, you don't know what it is to be a woman! I tell you it's nothing less than horrible. Look at Meg, and Pheasant, and me!"
She caught the glint of a smile. He said: "Look at Maurice, and Piers, and me!"
