Wooton stood still, biting his underlip nervously. "I—I'm afraid it's all my fault," he said, "I ought to have known it was getting late. And these storms come up so quickly here in the mountains. We can't stir from here. The storm is playing right around this wood. It means waiting." He saw her shivering slightly. Bending down, he picked up his top-coat, and put it gently about her shoulders. "You'll catch cold," he warned, in a tender voice.
She said nothing; but he could see gratitude in her eyes. Something seemed to draw her toward him. At each glaring flash she shrank nearer to him. He was looking tensely at her, his hand against a ledge of rock, lest the gusts of wind should swing him out into the open.
A crash that seemed to deafen all hearing for several instants; a flying mass of splintered wood, torn from a suddenly stricken tree that fell straight across the opening of their shelter; a light so white that it hurt the eyes; and a trembling under foot that shook the very ground these two storm-stayed ones stood. In the instant that followed the crash Wooton felt the girl beside him lean heavily towards him; her eyes were closed; she had fainted. Keeping her tightly in his arms, a queer smile played about the corners of his mouth. "It was ordained!" His thoughts uttered themselves almost unconsciously. Holding her so, with the thunder still rolling its chariot wheels all about the reverberate rocks, he kissed her.
The wind veered about, sending the rain spatteringly into their faces. Wooton unfastened the girl's veil, and took her hat off, very gently and carefully. The rain splashed into her face, streaming over the brow and the heavy lashes.
Slowly the lashes lifted; her breast moved in a tremulous breath. As comprehension of her position came to her awakening faculties she seemed to shudder a little, to attempt withdrawal; then her eyes sought his, and something found there seemed to soothe; she sighed again and sank more closely into his embrace. And now fires went coursing through the man; he pressed the girl's slight body to him fiercely, and kissing her upon both eyes, whispered into the rosy shell of her ear, "Dorothy—I love you!"
The storm still played relentlessly about them. The rain came further and further into the shelter-hole. But these two, lip to lip, and breath to breath, gave no heed save to the promptings of their own emotions. The elements might rend the rocks; but hearts they could not scar! The girl felt herself irresistibly drawn by this man. Something in him had always attracted her wonderfully—something she had never sought to explain, scarcely heeding it for any length of time. But now that chance had, as it seemed, thrown the magnet and the steel so closely together, she felt this hidden, mysterious force more mightily than ever; it seemed to her that in his kisses all the earth might melt away and become nothing. Moments when she feared him, when he inspired her with something not unlike anger, were succeeded by moments when she felt that he had put an arrow into her heart which to withdraw meant unutterable anguish; but which to bury more deeply meant the bitterest and sweetest of the bitter-sweets of love.
While the storm raged on and over the mountain, these two sat there where whatsoever forest-gods of love there be had drawn their magic circle. Reeling over the mountain top like a drunken man, the storm passed on along the river-banks, waking up echoes in the Bastei, and flying, presently, into Austria. Its muttered curses grew fainter and fainter, gradually to be swallowed up altogether in the swaying of the pines and the streaming of the rain.
Then, presently, the pines began to lift their heads again, to shake themselves as if in angry impatience, so that the rain dropped heavily, and after the flying column of darkness, light came in once more from the west. The sun was still above the horizon. Turning the rain-drops into opals that glistened with the rain-bow hues, the sunshine streamed over the forest. The afternoon, that had seen such a terrible battle of the elements, was to die in peace, and light, and sweetness.
They walked together to an eminence that was almost bared of trees. Below them the forest swept in every direction like a field of dark grass. The sun sent its last rays ricochetting over the waves of green to where they stood, silently. Another instant, and the great bronzed body was below the line of hills that made the horizon; only the salmon-colored streaks that stained the lower strata of the western sky remained to tell the tale of the sun-god's day. The air grew slightly chill.
With that first forerunner of the fall of night, there came into the dream that Dorothy Ware had moved in, the chilling thought of—certain facts. They had most assuredly missed the boat back to Dresden. Would there be another when they reached Schandau? Could they get home by carriage?