Belle-Ann darted to the rock-runged ladder that led the jagged, perilous way up to Eagle Crown. She climbed and climbed and climbed. Many times did she pause for breath. Then she climbed again and turned and twisted and clung on and pulled herself upward, always upward, insensible to fatigue. At last her eyes reached the level of the great jutting boulder and her gaze fell off into moonlit space. She drew her lithe self up and, half turning, beheld Lem's recumbent form bowed down beside a dun indenture in the table rock. He was unconscious of her presence. There was pathos in his crouching, still form.
There was dazed, mute ecstasy in the dark violet of Belle-Ann's eyes which never lifted from this penitent figure. She stood, to still her pounding heart, and waited for him to feel her nearness, or turn his face to her. The satin lustre of her curls was moist and her bosom lifted, palpitating with the advent of the new, great joyous thing that stood upon the threshold of her life to enter and spread its felicity and untold bliss.
All oblivious, Lem was kneeling amidst this new-found grace, and the quiet of a peace that cometh only to the righteous. Belle-Ann had suffered its pangs. She had reaped its peace. She knew the pathology of the pestilent revenge-sore that blights the lives of men. And she experienced all that Lem felt.
With her eyes still upon him, Belle-Ann took one quick, short step forward. She spoke his name, low and soft and vibrant with adoration.
As though he expected her, he looked up, smiling and tranquil, and his every radiant feature told of the triumph that compassed his renovated soul, purged now and wholly clean of its vindictive lust.
His apostasy was full and complete. He rose up strong now and bigger and taller than she had noted an hour since. And there was plain in his face at that instant a certain nobility and greatness.
He stretched his eager, long arms out to her.
"I'll let yo' lead me,—I'll let yo' lead me now, Belle-Ann!" he cried out, his happy eyes aglow with emotion and untold, deathless love.
She tossed the curls back from her lovely be-dimpled features, all aflush now. With a finger upon her bowed lips she answered:
"Kiss me heah—Lem," and walked into his waiting arms.