There was no word in answer; only the form straightened, and with the torch held high above his head he plunged down through the trees, straight as an arrow, in answer to her voice.
She had risen to her feet, but swayed unsteadily as she went to meet him.
"I am so glad—it—is—you," she said, her hands outstretched as he came close. And then that returning dizziness sent her staggering forward, half on her knees and half in his arms, as he threw the torch from him and caught her.
She did not faint, though the only thing she was still conscious of was that she was held in strong arms, and held very closely, and the beat of a heart that was not her own throbbed against her rather nerveless form. He had not yet spoken a word, but his breath coming quickly, brokenly, told of great exhaustion, or it may be excitement.
Opening her eyes, she looked up into the face that had a strange expression in the red light from the torch—his eyes seemed searching her own so curiously.
"I—I'm all right," she half smiled in answer to what she thought an unspoken query, "only"—and a wave of forgetfulness crept over the estrangement of the late days—and she added—"only—Hyas till nika" (I am very tired).
Her eyes were half closed in the content of being found, and the safety of his presence. She had not changed her position or noticed that he had not spoken. His hat had fallen to the ground, and something almost boyish was in the bend of his bared head and the softness of his features as his face drooped low over her own. Death brings back the curves of youth to aged faces sometimes—is it the only change that does so?
She felt the hand on her shoulder trembling; was it with her weight—and he so strong? A muttered sentence came to her ears, through which she could only distinguish a word that in its suppressed force might belong to either a curse or a prayer—an intense "Christ!"
That aroused her to a realization of what she had been too contented to remember. She opened her eyes and raised her head from his arm, brushing his lips with her hair as she did so.
"Were you so much alarmed?" she asked in a clearer, more matter-of-fact way, as she propped herself up on his outstretched arm; "and did you come alone to find me?"