Not a word was spoken. The quick, short breathing, the scuffling of feet among the leaves, and the snapping of dead twigs underfoot were the only sounds. Had the youth been a trained wrestler, David would have known what to expect, and would have been able to use method in his defence. As it was, he had to deal with an enraged creature who fought with the desperate instinct of an antagonist who fights to the death. He knew that the odds were against him, and felt rising within him a wild determination to win the combat, and, thinking only of Cassandra, to settle thus the vexed question, to fight with the blind passion and the primitive right of the strongest to win his mate. He gathered all his strength, his good English mettle and nerve, and grappled with a grip of steel.
This way and that, twisting, turning, stumbling on the uneven ground, with set teeth and faces drawn and fierce, they struggled, and all the time the light tweed coat on David's back showed a deeper stain from his heart's blood, and his face grew paler and his breath shorter. Yet a joy leaped within him. It was thus he might save her, either to win her or to die for her, for should Frale kill him, she would turn from him in hopeless horror, and David, even in dying, would save her.
Suddenly the battle was ended. Thryng's foot turned, on a rounded stone, causing him to lose his foothold. At the same instant, with terrible forward impetus, Frale closed with him, bending him backward until his head struck the lichen-covered rock. The purple orchid was bruised beneath him, and its color deepened with his blood. Then Frale rose and looked down upon the pallid, upturned face and inert body, which lay as he had crushed it down. As he stood thus, a white figure, bareheaded and alone, came swiftly through the wall of laurel which hid them and pausing terror-stricken in the open space, looked from one to the other.
For an instant Cassandra waited thus, as if she too were struck dead where she stood. Then she looked no more on the fallen man, but only at Frale, with eyes immovable and yet withdrawn, as if she were searching in her own soul for a thing to do, while her heart stood still and her throat closed. Those great gray eyes, with the green sea depths in them, began to glow with a cruel light, as if she too could kill,—as if they were drawing slowly from the deep well of her being, as it were, a sword from its scabbard wherewith to cut him through the heart. Her hand stole to her throat and pressed hard. Then she lifted it high above her head and held it, as if in an instant more one might see the invisible sword flash forth and strike him. Frale cried out then, "Don't, don't curse me, Cass," and lifted his arm to shield his face, while great beads of moisture stood out on his face.
"It's not for me to curse, Frale." Her voice was low and clear. "Curses come from hell, like what you been carrying in your heart that made you do this." Her voice grew louder, and her hand trembled and shut as if it grasped something. "I take it back—back from God—the promise I gave you there by the fall." Then, looking up, her voice grew low again, though still distinct. "I take that promise back forever, oh, God!" Her hand dropped. The cruel light died slowly out of her eyes, and she turned and knelt by the prostrate man, and began pulling open his coat. Frale took one step toward her.
"Cass," he said, with shaking voice, "I'll he'p you."
Her hands clinched into David's coat as she held it. "Go back. Don't you touch even his least finger," she cried, looking up at him from where she knelt like a creature hurt to the heart, defending its own. "You've done your work. Take your face where I never can see it again."