Redly the camp-fire lighted man and woman there alone together in the wild. For them there was no sense of isolation nor any loneliness. She was his world now, and he hers.
Up into his eyes she looked fairly and bravely, and her full lips smiled.
“Forgive me, Allan!” she whispered. “It was only a mood, that's all. It's passed now--it won't come back. Only forgive me, boy!”
“My dear, brave girl!” he murmured, smoothing the thick hair back from her brow. “Never complaining, never repining, never afraid!”
Their lips met again and for a time the girl's heart throbbed on his.
Afar a wolf's weird, tremulous call drifted down-wind. An owl, disturbed in its nocturnal quest, hooted upon the slope above to eastward; and across the darkening sky reeled an unsteady bat, far larger than in the old days when there were cities on the earth and ships upon the sea.
The fire burned low. Allan arose and flung fresh wood upon it, while sheaves of winking light gyrated upward through the air. Then he returned to Beatrice and wrapped her in his cloak.
And for a long, long time they both talked of many things--intimate, solemn, wondrous things--together in the night.
And the morrow was to be their wedding-day.