The baggage sleigh drove off. Their own jingling sleigh followed; and Tressa, buried in furs, looked out upon a dazzling, unblemished world, lying silvery white under a sky as azure as her eyes.
“Keuke Mongol—Heavenly Azure,” he whispered close to her crimsoned cheek, “do you know how I have loved you—always—always?”
“No, I did not know that,” she said.
“Nor I, in the beginning. Yet it happened, also, from the beginning when I first saw you.”
“That is a delicious thing to be told. Within me a most heavenly glow is spreading.... Unglove your hand.”
She slipped the glove from her own white fingers and felt for his under the furs.
“Aie,” she sighed, “you are more beautiful than Ali; more wonderful than the Flaming Pearl. Out of ice and fire a new world has been made for us.”
“Heavenly Azure—my darling!”
“Oh-h,” she sighed, “your words are sweeter than the breeze in Yian! I shall be a bride to you such as there never has been since the days of the Blessed Companions—may their names be perfumed and sweet-scented!... Shall I truly be one with you, my lord?”
“Mind, soul, and body, one being, you and I, little Heavenly Azure.”