“The second man!” he exclaimed. “You saw the second man!”
The girl, releasing his hand, turned her eyes slowly up to his, so that he met the flame of her ancient and undying love shining like stars upon him out of the night of time.
“Ever since that moment,” she said in a low voice that trembled, “I have been looking, waiting for you——”
He took her in his arms and smothered her words with kisses, holding her fiercely to him as though he would never let her go. “I, too,” he said, his whole being burning with his love, “I have been looking, waiting for you. Now I have found you. We have found each other...!”
The dusk fell slowly, imperceptibly. As twilight slowly draped the gaunt hills, blotting out familiar details, so the strong dream, veil upon veil, drew closer over the soul of the wanderer, obliterating finally the last reminder of To-day. The little wind had dropped and the desolate moors lay silent, but for the hum of distant water falling to its valley bed. His life, too, and the life of the girl, he knew, were similarly falling, falling into some deep shadowed bed where rest would come at last. No details troubled him, he asked himself no questions. A profound sense of happy peace numbed every nerve and stilled his beating heart.
He felt no fear, no anxiety, no hint of alarm or uneasiness vexed his singular contentment. He realized one thing only—that the girl lay in his arms, he held her fast, her breath mingled with his own. They had found each other. What else mattered?
From time to time, as the daylight faded and the sun went down behind the moors, she spoke. She uttered words he vaguely heard, listening, though with a certain curious effort, before he closed the thing she said with kisses. Even the fierceness of his blood was gone. The world lay still, life almost ceased to flow. Lapped in the deeps of his great love, he was redeemed, perhaps, of violence and savagery....
“Three dark birds,” she whispered, “pass across the sky ... they fall beyond the ridge. The omens are favourable. A hawk now follows them, cleaving the sky with pointed wings.”
“A hawk,” he murmured. “The badge of my old Legion.”
“My father will perform the sacrifice,” he heard again, though it seemed a long interval had passed, and the man’s figure was now invisible on the Crag amid the gathering darkness. “Already he prepares the fire. Look, the sacred island is alight. He has the black cock ready for the knife.”