For he had her; and as at last her lids twitched, then opened, and her dazed eyes looked at him; as she tried to struggle up while he restrained her; as she chokingly called his name and stretched a tremulous hand to him, there in the thunderous half light of the falls, he knew he could not ask for greater joy, though all of civilization and of power might be his, without her.
In his own soul he knew he would choose this abandonment and all this desperate peril with Beatrice, rather than safety, comfort, luxury, and the whole world as it once had been apart from her.
Yet, as sometimes happens in the supreme crises of life, his first spoken word was commonplace enough.
“There, there, lie still!” he commanded, drawing her close to his breast. “You're all right, now--just keep quiet, Beatrice!”
“What--what's happened--” she gasped. “Where--”
“Just a little accident, that's all,” he soothed the frightened girl. Dazed by the roaring cadence of the torrent, she shuddered and hid her face against him; and his arms protected her as he crouched there beside her in the scant shelter of the rocky shelf.
“We got carried over a waterfall, or something of that sort,” he added. “We're on a ledge in the river, or whatever it is, and--”
“You're hurt, Allan?”
“No, no--are you?”
“It's nothing, boy!” She looked up again, and even in the dim light he saw her try to smile. “Nothing matters so long as we have each other!”