They were on their feet, staggering up and down, two men moulded together like one man. Brodie struck blow after blow, and with every thud Gloria winced and felt a pain through her own body. And still King held his grip, both hands sunk deep into the thick throat.
They were apart, two blind, staggering men. What parted them they did not know and Gloria could not see. Thus they stood for a second only. Brodie lifted his hands—weak hands rising slowly, slowly—uncertainly. King saw him through a gathering mist; Brodie opened his mouth to draw in great sobbing breaths of air. King, the primal rage upon him, saw the great double teeth bared, and thought that his enemy was laughing at him. It was King who gathered himself first and struck first. All of the will he had, all of the endurance left in his battered body, all of the strength God gave him, he put into that blow. He struck Brodie full in the face, between the little battered blue eyes. And Brodie fell. He rose; he got to his knees and sagged up and forward. King's shout then was to ring through Gloria's memory for days to come; he bore down on Swen Brodie, caught him about the great body, lifted him clear of the floor and hurled him downward. Brodie struck heavily, his head against the rocks. And where he fell he lay—stunned or dead.
"Come," said King to Gloria. "Come quick."
He turned toward the cave's mouth and with one hand began to drag away the stones so that they could go out. His other hand was pressed to his side. His work done, he picked up the rifle at his feet and went out. Gloria, swaying and stumbling, came after him. Neither spoke a word as they made a slow way through the snow. King went unsteadily with dragging feet. They climbed the cliff laboriously. They were in their cave—it was like home. She dropped down on the fir-boughs, stumbling to them in the dark.
Chapter XXXI
Gloria did not know if she had slept or fainted. When she regained consciousness, though it was pitch dark and dead still, there was no first puzzled moment of uncertainty. That last wonderfully glad thought which had filled brain and heart when she sank down on her fir-boughs had persisted throughout her moments or hours of unconsciousness, pervading her subconscious self gloriously, flowering spontaneously in an awakening mind: Mark King had come back to her in her moment of peril; he had battled for her like the great-hearted hero that he was, he had saved her and had brought her home. Back home! She had prayed to God when utter undoing seemed inevitable, when death had seemed more desirable than life, and He had answered. He had sent Mark King to her!
She was saved, and though it was cold and dark and still, she felt her heart singing within her. Having lived through all that she had endured, having been brought safely through it, she was as confident of the future as though never had evil menaced her. She felt new strength coursing through her blood, new hope rising within her, new certainty that all was right with her and Mark King, that all would be right eternally. Terror and anguish and despair that had surged over her in so many great flooding waves now receded and were gone; in their place shone the great flame of life triumphant; she thrilled through with the largeness of life.
Never, thank God, would she forget how Mark King, forgetful of self, contemptuous of the frightful odds against him, had hurled himself into the midst of those drunken brutes; never would she forget how godlike he had stood forth in her eyes as those others leaped upon him and he beat them back. Forgetful of self—he had always been forgetful of self! She could not think of him as she had ever thought of any other man she had ever known—for what other man would have come to her as he had done, courting death gladly if only he could stand between her and the hideous thing that attacked her? The rush of great events had swept her mind clear of pettiness and prejudice; they bore her on from familiar view-points and to new levels; like roaring winds out of a tempestuous north they cleared away the wretched fogs that had enwrapped a self-centred girl; they made her see a man in the naked glory of his sheer, clean manhood.
To her now he stood forth clothed in magnificence. She could think upon him only in superlatives. He was fearless and he was unselfish; he was kind and generous and as honest-hearted as God's own clear sunshine. She knew now, suddenly and for the first time, because he had shown her, what the simple word man meant. How far apart he stood from such as Brodie, the beast! How high above such as Gratton!—And once, in the city, she had been ashamed of him and had turned to Gratton! Because he had appeared to her without just so much black cloth upon his back cut in just such a style! And now how bitterly she was ashamed of her shame. But for only an instant. Thereafter she forgot shame of any sort and exulted in her pride of him and in her pride that she was proud.
Yes, in glad defiance of a Gloria that had been, she was proud of the manhood of a man who had beaten her! He had been right; he had done that as the last argument with an empty-headed, selfish girl who deserved no better at his hands, a girl who had been like the Gratton whom she so abhorred and despised—despised even in death. She had been like Gratton the cowardly, contemptible, petty, selfish—dishonourable! All along Mark King had been right and she had been wrong, at every step. He had been gentle and patient after a fashion which now set her wondering and, in the end, lifted him to new heights in her esteem. When, without loving him, she had lied with her eyes and married him, that had been a Gratton sort of trick—like stealing his partners' food——