"I love you!"
He made strange mad music in her soul. She tried again to cry out: "I hate you!" She knew that still she was afraid of him, more afraid than ever. Yet he strode up and down and looked a young valiant god, and his golden voice found singing echoes within her soul and his wild extravagances awoke throbbing extravagances in her.... What can one know? What misdoubt? We are like babes in the dark. Of what can one be sure? Of the stars above?... Our hopes are like stars....
"I am no poet, though next to a strong fighting man I'd rather be a true poet than anything else God ever created! Were I a poet I'd build a song for you, girl! A song to ring through the eternal ages; going back to the roots of things when You and I were first You and I! It would be a song like one of the old troubadours', telling of great deeds and great loves only ... for you and I have never been the ones for cowardly littlenesses! I'd make a song to hang about the world's memory of you like a golden chain. And I'd carry on, having the poet's soul and vision, into ten thousand lives to come; down to the end of time when eternity is only at its beginnings!... But I am only plain Bruce Standing, a simple fighting man, and no poet; one who at best can but mouth the voicings of the true poets. So I can only pour all my heart and soul, girl, into my brief poem: I love you. I have always loved you! Always and always I shall love you!... And I'll crack any man's skull that so much as looks at you!"
She was not sure of his sanity; not certain that a fever, bred of his wounds, was not burning into his marrow. And yet——
"It's dawn, I tell you! We boil our coffee, we pick up a mouthful of food. And then we move on! And why? Because we're sure to have callers here in another day or so, and just now I don't want other people; I want you, girl, and only you and the rest of the world can go to pot!... And now we go!"
CHAPTER XX
Lynette, in a mood to expect anything of fate, wondered vaguely where the steep trail of adventure now led. She would not have been surprised had Standing set his plans for some spot a hundred miles distant. But she was surprised to arrive so soon, after only two or three hours, at their destination. He looked at her, exulting.
"Here is Eden!" he cried out joyously. "Remember the name, girl; bestowed upon this spot no longer ago than this very minute! Eden! And as far from the world as that other distant Eden. Here we stop and here no man finds us!"