In this fashion, they set forth through the blackness of the cavern. It was slow and tedious going. It had been tiresome enough when the torch made plain the obstacles strewn over the floor. Now, the difficulties were multiplied an hundredfold by the absence of light. They could only shuffle a foot about cautiously until it secured a firm place, then by like clumsy feeling choose the next step. Often, one or the other stumbled, was near to falling, but, since these mishaps occurred rarely at the same instant, the one still in balance gave sufficient support. Yet, slow as was their progress, Saxe found heart to be content with it. Always it was upward, until he dared believe that they were actually in either the passage by which they had descended, or in that which opened near it in the big room. He told his faith to Margaret, and she strove her best to throw off the gloom bred of this hateful environment, but could not; nevertheless, despite her fears, they won through at last to the great chamber.
“Hurrah!” cried Saxe. His guiding left hand swept suddenly into emptiness—another step, and still there had been no contact to his roving fingers. It was then that he halted, and gave a shout of triumph. “There’s no wall on your side?” he demanded.
The girl put out her hand, but there was nothing within reach. With a pang of compunction, she realized that she had been remiss in the duty appointed her, for she had not felt the wall even once in a long while. She made admission of her guilt, with charming contrition.
“It’s no matter,” Saxe declared. Profound relief sounded in his words. “We’ve come safe to the big room, and nothing else counts.” In sheer exuberance over their escape, he pressed the fingers that lay so lightly within his.
The girl thrilled in answer to the clasp. The announcement of their return to the chamber came to her overwrought mind as a reprieve from fearful doom. With the joy now possessing her, there came relaxation of the tension that had sustained her. In the warm pressure of his hand over hers was a comfort that loosed the self-control in which she had held herself hitherto. Without any warning, she drooped as she stood; her form grew limp. She would have fallen, had not Saxe, in terror for her as he felt the yielding of her muscles, drawn her to his breast. He held her close there. It seemed strange to him, as she lay motionless within his embrace, the while his lips touched softly a strand of the wonderful hair, that the glory of those tresses should not make all things visibly radiant in the blackness of the cavern, even as the nearness of her made a golden sunlight in his heart. He did not utter a word or venture aught beyond the kiss on that lock which kindliest fate had laid across his lips—only rested motionless, holding her firmly, reverently, what time she wept softly on his bosom. Surely, there needed no clumsy vehicle of words between those two embraced in the solitary dark. Twain pulses throbbed as one. In their rhythm ran a song of heavenly things.
CHAPTER XX
THE EVENTS OF A NIGHT
SINCE the large chamber was in utter darkness, Saxe decided on recourse to a device which had served him well in similar situations of his boyhood among the mountains. As soon as Margaret moved and drew a little away from him, he spoke.
“We must step back to the passage-way,” he said. “From it, I can take our bearings, so that we can cross the place without floundering about haphazard in the dark.”