She shrugged her shoulders and slipped her pack down.
“What’s wrong?” he queried.
“Nothing. I’m going to wash it.”
“Better not waste time——”
“Waste time! A few minutes won’t make any difference, considering we’ve wasted a year already.”
He turned from her with a sigh. She called it wasted, but it hadn’t been wasted to him. Now that the end of the journey was nigh, he found a strange joy in looking back over the past. Every little incident of their strange pilgrimage seemed to have garnered gold about it. Compared to the lonely, forbidding future, the past was like a paradise, to live for ever in his heart and mind. He had missed much, but he had gained something—passionate, all-consuming love for a 298 woman. Though she gave little in return, it mattered not. The finest type of love does not make demands upon that which it worships. He could keep her still by the same means as he had retained her all along, but his mode of thought had changed somewhat. A deeper love had grown out of the old tempestuous, tyrannous thing. It were better to give than to receive.
He watched her shaking the washing-pan in the water, her clear-cut face intent on the task at hand, and her hair glinting in the sunshine. She came splashing through the water with the pan in her hands.
“Look—something glitters there!”
He took it from her and gave one glance at the contents—a small heap of black and yellow.
Then he laughed loudly.