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THE LIGHT GOES OUT
309

"Darling! You've not been awake all this time!"

"Not all the time. Have they come yet?"

"No, not yet."

"I'd like you to be beside me for a little while."

Joan blew out the lamp in her room and felt her way back to him. She sat down on the floor beside the bed and took his hand. He wriggled himself to the edge of the bed and lay very close to her, with his cheek against her arm. It was so dark that they could not see one another. The Light shot its steady silver finger straight out toward the horizon, but it seemed only to make the blackness of the room more intense. The little waves wrangled together, snarling and hissing at the foot of the wall.

Joan thought presently that Garth was asleep, and began quietly to withdraw her hand, when a sound at the landing made her stop.

"What was it?" whispered Garth, wide awake.

The noise came again, this time clearly recognizable as the last muffled snort of a power-boat's engine.

"There they are!" laughed Joan, springing