As I sat there, joyous over the conquest we had made, but more supremely happy because she was safe and near me, thinking tumultuous things which were a credit to mankind, hoping hopes that man has never realized, I raised my face to the sky and thanked God.
Creature of incongruities! I thanked God for putting her safely into my keeping, when my fingers had not yet been washed after their bath in a fellow creature's blood! The cave man had gone abroad at dusk to find a mate, and human pawns who stood in his way had been of no more consequence than ants!
Thus it has always been for the women we love. Thus it should be.
CHAPTER XVIII
DOLORIA
With the first glimpse of dawn I arose and faced the East; my arms out, my palms up, and across them my rifle as a kind of offering to the day. I do not know why I did this—this spontaneous though semi-pagan act—except that on my "island," and in my power, slept the girl I loved; she whom I had stolen from her watchful tribe, whom I would have as mate. By all the laws of the wilderness she was mine, and I wanted to tell someone, to challenge the wild, that these arms and hands and this rifle would protect her till the end.
A thin mist hung low upon the prairie, a faint tint of salmon touched the sky, and to my lips sprang the words of that inspiring "Salutation of the Dawn" which found expression in the Orient many thousands of years ago:
Listen to the Exhortation of the Dawn!
Look to this Day!
For it is life, the very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the verities
And realities of your existence:
The glory of action,
The bliss of growth,
The splendor of beauty:
For yesterday is but a dream,
And tomorrow is only a vision;
But today well-lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness,
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this Day!