I should have started a fire with
it, but couldn't quite bring myself to let it go, yet."
"Is she going to hold out?" asked Peter.
"She'll hold out or get her neck wrung," said Linda. "I truly
think she has been redeemed. She has been born again. She has a
new heart and a new soul and a new impulse and a right conception
of life. Why, Peter, she has even got a new body. Her face is
not the same."
"She is much handsomer," said Peter.
"Isn't she?" cried Linda enthusiastically. "And doesn't having a
soul and doesn't thinking about essential things make the most
remarkable difference in her? It is worth going through a fiery
furnace to come out new like that. I called her Abednego the
other day, but she didn't know what I meant."
Then they sat silent and watched the sea for a long time. By
and by the night air grew chill. Peter slipped from the rock and
went
up the beach and came back with an Indian blanket. He put it
very carefully around Linda's shoulders, and when he went to
resume his seat beside her he found one of her arms stretching it
with a blanket corner for him. So he sat down beside her and
drew the corner over his shoulder; and because his right arm was
very much in his way, and it would have been very disagreeable if
Linda had slipped from the rock and fallen into the cold, salt,
unsympathetic Pacific at nine o'clock at night--merely to dispose
of the arm comfortably and to ensure her security, Peter put it
around Linda and drew her up beside him very close.
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