She looked up, dark eyes swimming. There came a smile—a little up-flirt at one corner of her mouth.
Without reserve he lowered his lips to hers and kissed her tenderly, as if all along he had known that this precious moment would one day come to him.
“It’s all right now—all right now, Charmian.”
And Charmian knew that it was all right now.
Two hours later the great man-made bird rose from the ice-sheet on the lake and roared away over the Valley of Arcana—away from the ice and snow and the horrors of the rocky cave—away to the sunny green lands that border the blue Pacific.
And the little ouzel, lifting his fluty notes amidst the icy spray of his beloved waterfall, bobbed and bowed and dived happily, and knew not of its going.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.