"You haven't lost all your looks," he told her breathlessly. "That mouth is still pretty enough to kiss. And I guess you won't slap—this time—"
He drew her toward him, his dark face lowering toward hers. She struggled, trying to wrench away from him. Helpless and alone, the moment of final horror was at hand. In this last instant her whole being leaped again to Ben,—the man whose strength had been her fort throughout all their first weeks in the wilds, but whom she had left helpless and sick in the distant cavern. Yet even now he would rise and come to her if he knew of her peril. Her voice rose shrilly to a scream. "Ben—help me!"
And Ray's hands fell from her shoulders as he heard the incredible answer from the shore of the lake. The brush rustled and cracked: there was a strange sound of a heavy footfall,—slow, unsteady, but approaching them as certain as the speeding stars approach their mysterious destinations in the far reaches of the sky. Ray straightened, staring; Chan stood as if frozen, his hands half-raised, his eyes wide open.
"I'm coming, Beatrice," some one said in the coverts. Her cries, uttered when her father fell, had not gone unheard. In the last stages of exhaustion, deathly pale yet with a face of iron, Ben came reeling toward them out of the moonlight.
XLII
Ben walked quietly into the circle of firelight and stood at Beatrice's side. But while Ray and Chan gazed at him as if he were a spectre from the grave, Beatrice's only impulse was one of immeasurable and unspeakable thankfulness. No fate on earth was so dreadful but that it would be somewhat alleviated by the fact of his presence: just the sight of him, standing beside her, put her in some vague way out of Ray's power to harm. Exhausted, reeling, he was still the prop of her life and hope.
"Here I am," he said quietly. "The letter's in my pocket. Do what you want with me—but let Beatrice go."
His words brought Ray to himself in some degree at least. The ridiculous fear of the moment before speedily passed away. Why, the man was exhausted—helpless in their hands—and the letter was in his pocket. It meant triumph—nothing else. All Ray's aims had been attained. With Ben's death the claim, a fourth of which had been his motive when he had slain Ezram, would pass entirely to him,—except for such share as he would have to give Chan. His star of fortune was in the sky. It was his moment of glory,—long-awaited but enrapturing him at last.