CHAPTER LVIII
THE WARRIOR HEART
As Mora turned off the highway, and pressed Icon deep into the glades, she cried over and over aloud, for there was none to hear: "I go to my husband, and I choose to ride alone."
How wondrous it seemed, this going to him; a second giving, a deeper surrender, a fuller yielding.
When she went to him in the crypt, her body had recoiled, her spirit had shrunk, shamed, humbled, and unwilling. Her mind alone, governed by her will, had driven her along the path of her resolve, holding her upon the stretcher, until too late to cry out or to return.
Now—how different! Free as air, alone, uncoerced, even unexpected, she left her own home, and her own people, to ride, unattended, straight to the arms of the man who had won her.
A wild joy seized and shook her.
The soft, mysterious glades, beneath vast, leafy domes, seemed enchanted ground. The hoofs of Icon thudded softly on the moss. The stillness seemed alive with whispering life. Rabbits sat still to peep, then whisked and ran. Great birds rose suddenly, on whirring wings. Tiny birds, fearless, stayed on their twigs and sang.
There was scurrying among ferns and rocks, telling of bright, watchful eyes; of life, safeguarding itself, unseen. Yet all these varied sounds, Nature disturbed in the shady haunts which were her rightful home, did but emphasize the vast stillness, the utter solitude, the complete remoteness from human dwelling-place.
Shining through parted boughs and slowly moving leaves, the sunlight fell, in golden bars or shifting yellow patches, on the glade.