“There ought to be somewhere about seven hundred, I suppose,” was Gard’s reply. “We don’t need ’em any more. Let’s help along the blaze with ’em.”
She caught his hands, with a little cry of dismay.
“No! No!” cried she, “You must not destroy them! Your record of days; hard, thorny days.” She covered the thorns with one hand, in a passionate gesture of protection.
“They were good days,” he answered, trying to comfort her. “I got a lot of good out of them.”
“But oh, the price you paid!” Tears glistened in her eyes.
They were in the shadow of a big live-oak, and he drew her to him.
“It was sure a man’s price,” he said, looking into her face. “But I got full value for it.”
The night was far spent when Gard awoke. A late moon rode high in the heavens, flooding the glade with white light. The familiarity of the scene bewildered his rousing consciousness. The circling trees, the murmur of water, the far-seeming faint glow of embers in the great fireplace, his narrow ocotilla bed with its bear-skin covering: how well he knew them all! Had he but slept and dreamed, to awaken after all to the daily round of his accustomed solitude?
He raised himself upon one elbow. On the cot which they had brought for her, there, within reach of his hand, Helen lay sleeping. A beam of the white light sifted down through encircling trees and fell across her face, round which the night wind had fluttered her hair to soft disorder. Her head was thrown back, her chin nestling in one supporting palm. The pure, tender outline of brow and cheek thrilled him as he gazed, his soul touched to awe.
Long, long he looked, worship and wonder stirring the deeps of his nature. It was no dream; she was there beside him; there was no drede.