At the sound of Neill’s voice Dunke had extinguished the candle and vanished in the darkness with Struve, the latter holding him by the arm in a despairing grip.  Neill shouted again and again, as he relighted his candle, but there came no answer to his calls.

“We had better make for the shaft,” he said.

They set out on the long walk to the opening that led up to the light and the pure air.  For a while they walked on in silence.  At last he took her hand and guided her fingers across the seam on his wrist.

“It don’t seem only four days since you did that, honey,” he murmured.

“Did I do that?” Her voice was full of self-reproach, and before he could stop her she lifted his hand and kissed the welt.

“Don’t, sweet.  I deserved what I got and more.  I’m ready with that apology you didn’t want then, Peggy.”

“But I don’t want it now, either.  I won’t have it.  Didn’t I tell you I wouldn’t?  Besides,” she added, with a little leap of laughter in her voice, “why should you ask pardon for kissing the girl you were meant to—­ to——­”

He finished it for her.

“To marry, Peggy.  I didn’t know it then, but I knew it before you said good-by with your whip.”

“And I didn’t know it till next morning,” she said.

“Did you know it then, when you were so mean to me?”

“That was why I was so mean to you.  I had to punish myself and you because I—­ liked you so well.”

She buried her face shyly in his coat to cover this confession.

It seemed easy for both of them to laugh over nothing in the exuberance of their common happiness.  His joy pealed now delightedly.

“I can’t believe it—­ that four days ago you wasn’t on the earth for me.  Seems like you always belonged; seems like I always enjoyed your sassy ways.”

“That’s just the way I feel about you.  It’s really scandalous that in less than a week—­ just a little more than half a week—­ we should be engaged.  We are engaged, aren’t we?”

“Very much.”

“Well, then—­ it sounds improper, but it isn’t the least bit.  It’s right.  Isn’t it?”

“It ce’tainly is.”

“But you know I’ve always thought that people who got engaged so soon are the same kind of people that correspond through matrimonial papers.  I didn’t suppose it would ever happen to me.”

“Some right strange things happen while a person is alive, Peggy.”

“And I don’t really know anything at all about you except that you say your name is Larry Neill.  Maybe you are married already.”

She paused, startled at the impossible thought.

“It must have happened before I can remember, then,” he laughed.

“Or engaged.  Very likely you have been engaged a dozen times.  Southern people do, they say.”

“Then I’m an exception.”

“And me—­ you don’t know anything about me.”

“A fellow has to take some risk or quit living,” he told her gaily.