"The wind is changing," he muttered. "What now?"
There came another rush of wind. But it was not so strong as its
predecessors had been; and looking into the sky he could see the cloud
movement. He shook Virginia by the shoulder, and there was a
triumphant ring in his voice as he shouted into her ear,
"The gale is passing!"
Gradually but surely the shrieking of the elements diminished; the seas
were palpably falling. Great, dark shapes could now be seen rushing
across the lightening firmament, and once the girl, stretching her arm
upward, exclaimed, as through a rift overhead she caught a glimpse of a
little star.
Half an hour--there came a great peace.
Now, a man and a woman out of the chaos--with the world and all its
civilization and its manners and its men and its affairs as though they
had never been, as though the two had lived for a flashing minute in
some old dream--the strain of years that makes for ceremony and
diffidence and convention and custom suddenly stopped, turned backward.
They were the first man and the first woman on the verge of upheaval,
having felt fear, not as we feel it, but in a dull, instinctive
way--wondering horribly. Just two, just a man and a woman, emerging
from all the destructive might of the world.
She--not Virginia Howland now--just She--turned toward the man who
crouched with one hand still clutching the wheel, the other lying
loosely, palm downward upon the deck.
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