CHAPTER XIX
The Sunset Tide
FOR a time after Barcus had tramped off she lingered upon the sands, in the mouth of the shelter he had selected, staring hungrily out over the shimmering sea. Slowly the sea darkened with the slow decline of the sun, by whose altitude above the horizon the day had now not ninety minutes more to run. She thought drowsily that if that sun sank without her learning that her lover lived, it would not rise again upon a world tenanted by Rose Trine.
It was not true, she told herself, that people never die of broken hearts. … Then sleep overwhelmed her suddenly, like a great, dark cloud. But its dominion over her was not of long duration. She came to her senses to find Barcus gently shaking her by the shoulder, and sat up with a cry of mystified compassion; for in the brief time that he had been absent—it had not been more than an hour—most unquestionably Mr. Barcus had been severely used.
He had acquired a long but shallow cut over one eye, together with a bruised and swollen cheek; and what simple articles of clothing remained to him,
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