Late that afternoon I was busying myself in the cabin, lighting a fire and preparing some simple articles of food, for I could not let myself spend all my time brooding like Yasma. A brilliant light gleamed in her eyes; ecstasy and longing and terror and furious enthusiasm convulsed her features; she seemed a living blaze of vehemence and desire. Urgently she seized my hand, and led me unresisting into the open; then passionately pointed upward, upward to a triangle of black dots darting across the gray heavens.
"See!" she cried. "See, the birds fly south! The last birds fly south!"
I glanced skyward, but first peered at her in fright, for it occurred to me that brooding and excitement might have deranged her mind. But except for her extreme agitation, she appeared quite normal; her eyes flashed with a beautiful flame, and her old animated, fiery self had revived.
"Let me go from here!" she pleaded, almost in a transport. "Let me go, oh, let me go the way of the birds!"
I stood as if paralyzed by the force of her words; and if she had made a motion to leave, I might not have been able to detain her.
"Oh, let me go the way of the birds!" she repeated. "Do not hold me, my beloved! I want to go far from here, across the mountains, the way the birds go!"
But dread of losing her was beginning to possess me, and I made my first defense against the wild power of her appeal. "No!" I forbade. "You shall not go! You shall stay here with me!"
"No, I must go! Yulada calls! For now the last birds fly south, the last birds fly south! Oh, I must go, my beloved!"
In these words there was an intensity of longing that was almost pitiable. But my own longing was at storm pitch; and desperately I reiterated what I had just said.
"But Yulada orders me to go! I cannot resist her call! It is burning away in me like a torment!" she wailed, and raised her arms imploringly toward the gray skies, across which another band of winged travelers was careering. "Oh, I must not be late! Good-bye, my beloved!"