Without a word she flung her arms about me, stormily sobbing; and I held her in an embrace so long and fierce that I might have been a foe striving to crush her frail body.
But at length she struggled free, and stood before me, moist-eyed and pathetically smiling. "Good-bye, my beloved, good-bye," she murmured, and edged toward the door.
"Do not go, do not go!" I cried, and I stretched out my arms imploringly. But some numbing force had paralyzed my limbs—I was unable to move a step.
"Good-bye, my beloved," she repeated, with a look like a tormented angel's. "Good-bye—until the spring!"
And her slender form slipped past the door, and its wooden bulk closed behind her. And as she escaped, sudden action came to my frozen limbs, and I rushed out of the cabin, calling and calling, "Yasma! Yasma!" And then, frantically, "Yasma! Yasma!" But only the wind replied. A whirl of dust struck me in the face, and for a moment I was half blinded. Then, when I turned to look for Yasma, no Yasma was to be seen. And in bewilderment and balked anger and despair, I realized that I should see her no more until the birds were flying north.