"Are you, dearest?" I caressed the soft floss of her hair.
"Yes, I just wish we could live like this forever;" and she nestled up to me ever so fondly.
Aye, she was happy, and I will always bless the memory of those days, and thank God I was the means of bringing a little gladness into her marred life. She was happy, and yet we were living in what society would call sin. Conventionally we were not man and wife, yet never were man and wife more devoted, more self-respecting. Never were man and wife endowed with purer ideals, with a more exalted conception of the sanctity of love. Yet there were many in the town not half so delicate, so refined, so spiritual, who would have passed my little lady like a pariah. But what cared we?
And perhaps it was the very greatness of my love for her that sometimes made me fear; so that often in the ecstasy of a moment I would catch my breath and wonder if it all could last. And when the poplars turned to gold, and up the valley stole a shuddering breath of desolation, my fear grew apace. The sky was all resplendent with the winter stars, and keen and hard their facets sparkled. And I knew that somewhere underneath those stars there slept Locasto. But was it the sleep of the living or of the dead? Would he return?
CHAPTER IX
Two men were crawling over the winter-locked plain. In the aching circle of its immensity they were like little black ants. One, the leader, was of great bulk and of a vast strength; while the other was small and wiry, of the breed that clings like a louse to life while better men perish.
On all sides of the frozen lake over which they were travelling were hills covered with harsh pine, that pricked funereally up to the boulder-broken snows. Above that was a stormy and fantastic sea of mountains baring many a fierce peak-fang to the hollow heavens. The sky was a waxen grey, cold as a corpse-light. The snow was an immaculate shroud, unmarked by track of bird or beast. Death-sealed the land lay in its silent vastitude, in its despairful desolation.
The small man was breaking trail. Down almost to his knees in the soft snow, he sank at every step; yet ever he dragged a foot painfully upward, and made another forward plunge. The snowshoe thong, jagged with ice, chafed him cruelly. The muscles of his legs ached as insistently as if clamped in a vice. He lurched forward with fatigue, so that he seemed to be ever stumbling, yet recovering himself.
"Come on there, you darned little shrimp; get a move on you," growled the big man from within the frost-fringed hood of his parka.