What should he know about Red Indian grief, of Blackfoot rites which mourned for murdered honor? The priestess had bled nearly to death, had starved her body these four days, and only remained alive because the guardian spirits gave her power.
They said that Storm was coming. Who could mistake that blundering white man's rush down the hillside, that muttering of oaths when he fell over No-man's body, that funny dear old melody?
Had she not loved so fiercely she could not have hated his coming with such frantic intensity. That he should break into the place where she hid her misery!
Purity fierce as fire, anger which struck like lightning, pride ferocious, a wild heart savage as this terrific wilderness, all that had made her overwrought, hysterical, half mad, found their expression now as she crouched kneeling, her bow drawn, her arrow ready, her staring eyes waiting until the light showed the target, and then she steadied her aim directly at his heart.
Storm saw the woman he had worshiped from childhood, married in Dreamland, his wife whom now the torch revealed to him for the first time on earth—a terrible, avenging fury.
As a horseman speaks of his horse, so had this woman spoken of her animal, her earthly body, which, be it beautiful or be it disfigured, was a thing apart from herself, which he had never seen, or loved, or thought about.
It is not the lamp which gives light, or the oil, or the wick, but the flame. So the earthly body inspires passion, while Love is of the soul, burning, spiritual, not of the Earth or of Time, but of the Heavens eternal. And Death can only make the dull flame clear, shining above the level of the earth mists, in regions where Love is regnant, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal. The human love which lights our way on earth is to that mighty power, like the small twinkle in a sunlit dew-drop.
So Storm saw dimly by the flickering torchlight the disfigured body, but clearly radiantly the untarnished soul. His love was not of the Earth, or of Time, or Space or any limitation, but the divine spark which kindled his manhood, not to be quenched by any illusion of the senses. And as to the threatened death, what was that to him except a quick awakening from this earth-dream!
Long ago in Dreamland Rain had launched an arrow through Storm's heart, but by his faith he had been saved from any pain or injury from the wound. Laughing at that old memory, he said, "I still believe"; and, just as he had then, so now he stretched out his arms.
His hair was draggled with the wet, his deerskin dress was soaked, dank, clinging to his body; but neither the drenching, the cold, nor his weariness could lower the flash of his eyes or hide the love which lighted his face as he knelt there, not come to affront her privacy, but to show Rain that he, her lover, her husband, had come at last to protect and succor her. She understood.