"What, you would----"
"I will do nothing by halves, and your rescue is but half accomplished if no aid comes from without. But I must wait till Marco has reached the village; he will search every hut, examine every stone in it, and meanwhile I shall gain time to go."
"Never!" cried Gerald. "I will not permit it. You might meet Obrevic, and I, too, know him. If he should guess--nay, even suspect, your design, he would kill you."
"Certainly he would!" said Danira, coldly. "And he would do right."
"Danira!"
"If Marco punished treason with death he would be in the right, and I should not flinch from the blow. I am calling the foe to the aid of a foe; that is treason; I know it."
"Then why do you save me at such a price?" asked the young officer, fixing his eyes intently upon her.
"Because I must."
The words did not sound submissive but harsh. They contained a sullen rebellion against the power which had fettered not only the girl's will but her whole nature, and which enraged her even while she yielded to it. She had brought the foreigner, the foe, to the sacred spring, although she knew that such a rescue would be considered treachery and desecration; she was ready to sacrifice everything for him, yet at the same moment turned almost with hatred from him and his love.
The bora could not penetrate the depths of the ravine, but it raged all the more fiercely on the upper heights, roaring around the peaks as if it would hurl them downward. Old legends relate that, on such tempestuous nights, the spirits of all the murdered men whose blood has ever reddened the earth are abroad, and it really seemed as though spectral armies were fighting in the air and sweeping madly onward. Sometimes it sounded as if thousands of voices, jeering, threatening, hissing, blended in one confused medley, till at last all united with the raving and howling into a fierce melody, a song of triumph, which celebrated only destruction and ruin.