"I love you. With all my heart and soul and strength, I love you."
Gently she put him aside.
"Let me go now, Ralph. I must be with Amy."
CHAPTER THIRTY
A woman was standing beside an iron gate all but hidden in a riotous growth of blossoming vines that opened upon a grass-grown mound.
"To the memory of Elijah Berl."
"He shall make the desert blossom as the rose"—was graven on the bronze plate.
Far below her, and on either side, instead of the bare, brown hillsides of a few, short years ago, grew rank on rank, leaves of glossy green, flecked with tawny gold. Here and there, red-tiled houses, their walls all but covered with climbing roses, stood at the head of marshalled groves. Shining lines moved out and in, where the waters of the Sangre de Cristo sank into the red earth and sprang upwards in fruit and flower. The air was resonant with happy bird notes that trilled from tree to tree as the tiny musicians with swelling throats poured out the happiness that their little bodies could not contain.
There was no longer the old-time harshness of the desert air, the sky was bluer, the sunlight softer. There was nothing that whispered of death, save the bronze tablet; even this spoke not so much of death as of triumph over it.