With a little gasp Tharon put a hand to her throat, for there, an unbelievably short distance down, lay the Cup o’ God, without a doubt. A small, round glade of living green, watered by a whispering stream that lost itself the Lord knew where, it lay like a tiny gem in the pink stone setting. Trees stood in utter quiet about its edges, for there was here no slightest breath of air. Lush grass carpeted its level floor. And there, almost directly under the marked way leading down, lay a tiny camp––the ashes of a dead fire, a gun against a tree, and––here Tharon leaned far out and looked as if her very spirit would penetrate 270 the distance––a blanket spread on the level earth, on which there lay the body of a man!
It was a trim body, they could see from where they stood, clad in dark garments of olive drab that hugged the lean limbs close.
“Kenset!” whispered Tharon with paling lips. “Kenset of th’ foothills,––an’––he––looks,” she wet those ashy lips, “he––looks like he is dead.”
Without another word she set her feet in the precarious way and went down so fast that Billy’s heart rose in his throat and choked him, and for the first time since he could remember, he called fervently upon his Maker with honest reverence. He thought at every slip and scramble that she must fall and go hurtling down the Rockface.
But that uncanny instinct which had brought her this far was at her command still. She went down faster than it seemed possible for anything to go, and before the rider was able to catch up she had leaped to the grassy floor, and was running forward toward that still form on the blanket.
“Kenset!” she cried like a bugle, “Kenset! Kenset! Oh,––David!”
And then it was that the quiet form stirred, rolled over on its side, lifted itself on an elbow––and held out two arms that wavered grotesquely, but were eloquent of love’s power and its need. 271
And the Mistress of Last’s flung herself on her knees, gathered up this strange man as if he had been a child, pressed him hard against her breast, and kissed him as we kiss our dead. She pushed his face from her and looked into it as if she would see his very soul, the tears running on her white cheeks, her lips working soundlessly.
This was love! This agony––this ecstasy––this sublime forgetting of all the world beside––this reward after struggle.
Billy stood for a second at the foot of the Wall, and the nails cut in his palms. Then he whirled and went fast as he could walk toward the first trees that presented themselves––and he could not see where he was going for the bleak grey mist that swam in his eyes.