She came to the end, riding up and down in an ecstatic series of “Ahs!” and as the song floated away into piano and pianissimo Denver braved the light to see her.
She was standing by the piano, swaying like a flower to the music; and a lamp behind made her face like a cameo, her hair like a mass of gold. That was all he saw in the swift, stolen moment before he retreated in a panic to his cave. It was she, the beautiful woman that the seeress had predicted, the one he should fall in love with! She had won his heart before he even saw her, but how could he hope to win her? She was a singer, an artist as Mother Trigedgo had said, and he was a hobo miner. He stood by his cavern looking down on the town and up at the moon and stars 87and the words of her song came back to his ears in a continual, haunting refrain.
“Ah! smile on our enchantment,
Night of Love, O night of love!
Ah, Ah! Ah, Ah! Ah, Ah! Ah, Ah!”
It floated away in a lilting diminuendo, a joyous, mocking refrain; and long after the night was quiet again the music still ran through his head. It possessed him, it broke his sleep, it followed him in dreams; and with it all went the vision of the singer, surrounded like St. Cecilia with a golden halo of light. He woke up at dawn with a fire in his brain, a tumult of unrest in his breast; and like a buck when he feels the first sting of a wound he turned his face towards the heights. The valley seemed to oppress him, to cabin him in; but up on the cliffs where the eagles soared there was space and the breath of free winds. He toiled up tirelessly, a fierce energy in his limbs, a mill-race of thoughts in his mind, and at last on the summit he turned and looked down on the house that sheltered his beloved.
She was the woman, he knew it, for his heart had told him long before he had thought of the prophecy; and now the choice between the gold and silver treasures seemed as nothing compared to winning her. Of all the admonitions which had been laid upon him by the words of the Cornish seeress, none seemed more onerous than this about the woman that he would love.
88“You will fall in love with a beautiful woman who is an artist,” Mother Trigedgo had written, “but beware how you reveal your affection or she will confer her hand upon another.”
On another! This woman, whom he had worshipped from the moment he had seen her, would flaunt him if he revealed his love! That was the thought which had tortured him and driven him to the heights, where he could wrestle with his problem alone. How could he meet her without her reading in his eyes the secret he must not reveal? And yet he was possessed with a mad desire to see her–to see her and hear her sing. All her scales and roulades, her runs and trills, had passed by him like so much smoke; but when the mood had come and she had sung her song-of-songs he had lost his heart to her instantly. But if, in her presence, he revealed this new love she would confer her hand upon another!
He stood on the edge of Apache Leap and gazed down at the valley below, then he looked far away where peak piled on peak and the desert sloped away to the horizon. It was hot, barren land, every ridge spiked with giant cactus, every gulch a bruising tangle of brush and rocks; but Pinal lay sleeping in the cool shadow of the Leap, and Drusilla slept there too. But who would think to look for her in a place like that, or for the treasures of silver and gold? The finger of destiny had pointed him plain, for he stood on the Place of Death. It was lifeless yet, save for the uneasy eagles who watched 89him from a splintered crag; and the clean, black shadow that lapped out over the plain held the woman and the treasures in its compass.
A sense of awe, of religious exaltation, came over Denver as he considered the prophecy, and from somewhere within him there came a new strength which stilled the fierce tumult in his breast. Since the stars had willed it that he should have this woman if he veiled his love from her eyes he would be brave then, and constant, and steel his boy’s heart to resist her matchless charms. He would watch over her from afar, feeding his love in secret, and when the time came he would reap his reward and the prophecy would be fulfilled. And while he stood aloof, stealing a glimpse of her at night or listening to the magic of her songs; he must win the two treasures, both the silver and the gold, to lay as an offering at her feet.
The shadow of the Leap drew back from the town, leaving the houses sun-struck and bare, and as his mind went back to the choice between the treasures he watched the moving objects below. He saw a steer wandering down the empty street, and Old Bunk going across to the store; and then in the walled garden that lay behind the house he beheld a woman’s form. It was draped in white and it moved about rhythmically, bending slowly from side to side; and then with the graceful ethereal lightness it leapt and whirled in a dance. In the profundity of the distance all was lost but the grace of it, the fairy-like flitting to and fro; 90and, as Denver watched, the tears leapt to his eyes at the thought of her perfect beauty.