The girl stood looking out across the valley, a weird, rapt look in her face, her hair falling loose, a staff like a shepherd’s crook in one hand, the other hand over her eyes as she slowly looked from point to point of the horizon.
The two watched her without speaking. Presently she saw them. She gazed at them for a minute, then descended to them. Lawless and Pierre rose, doffing their hats. She looked at both a moment, and her eyes settled on Pierre. Presently she held out her hand to him. “I knew you—yesterday,” she said.
Pierre returned the intensity of her gaze with one kind and strong.
“So—so, Cynthie,” he said; “sit down and eat.”
He dropped on a knee and drew a scone and some fish from the ashes. She sat facing them, and, taking from a bag at her side some wild fruits, ate slowly, saying nothing. Lawless noticed that her hair had become grey at her temples, though she was but one-and-twenty years old. Her face, brown as it was, shone with a white kind of light, which may, or may not, have come from the crucible of her eyes, where the tragedy of her life was fusing. Lawless could not bear to look long, for the fire that consumes a body and sets free a soul is not for the sight of the quick. At last she rose, her body steady, but her hands having that tremulous activity of her eyes.
“Will you not stay, Cynthie?” asked Lawless very kindly.
She came close to him, and, after searching his eyes, said with a smile that almost hurt him, “When I have found him, I will bring him to your camp-fire. Last night the Voice said that he waits for me where the mist rises from the river at daybreak, close to the home of the White Swan. Do you know where is the home of the White Swan? Before the frost comes and the red wolf cries, I must find him. Winter is the time of sleep.
“I will give him honey and dried meat. I know where we shall live together. You never saw such roses! Hush! I have a place where we can hide.”
Suddenly her gaze became fixed and dream-like, and she said slowly: “In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the Day of Judgment, Good Lord, deliver us!”
“Good Lord, deliver us!” repeated Lawless in a low voice. Without looking at them, she slowly turned away and passed up the hill-side, her eyes scanning the valley as before.