"Anabal! Anabal!... Anabal, my joy! I love you.... I love you.... I love you. All the youth of my life is upon me again. I am blind, but I see you as on the day when you quickened with new life! Dear, O my dear, heart of me, joy of me! Anabal, listen! I am Torcall! All is forgotten: all the weary years are gone! Sweetheart, this is my heart against your heart! Ah—h—h!"
He had seized her, and the flames of his kisses scorched her face. Between his panting, sobbing cries, and her choking breath, he buried his face in her hair, heedless of the grey blight upon that yellow corn; and bruised that quivering body, whose flesh was still so warm, so firm, young long after the breath of age on the hair, in the eyes.
Then she gathered the strength that was in her. With a fierce blow she made him reel, so that he nigh slipped and fell.
"Murderer!"
A blank silence came upon them. Around, the rush of the water: swift-sighing it seethed beyond, with hollow roar and surge in the linn below where they stood. Over the forest lay a faint yellow bloom: the moon shining upon it from behind Ben Iolair. A fern-owl churred its love-cry through the warm, fragrant night. A thin, impalpable mist obscured the few stars that shone, but the splintered lance-rays of them glistered this faint exhalation of the earth.
When the man spoke, his voice was as though frozen.
"It is a lie."
"No lie is it, Torcall Cameron; for I see the naked truth in your soul."
"It is a lie."
"Where is my man, where is my man Fergus, whom you slew?"