Adam’s keen eyes, peering through the red-tinged obscurity, made out the dark shape of Virey staggering along back and forth like an old man driven and bewildered, hounded by the death he feared. The sight gave Adam a moment of fierce satisfaction. Strong as was the influence of Magdalene Virey, it could not keep down hate for this selfish and fallen man. Selfish beyond all other frailty of human nature! The narrow mind obsessed with self—the I and me and mine—the miserable littleness that could not forgive, that could not understand! Adam had pity even in his hate.
He found the woman on the bench, lying prone, a white, limp, fragile shape, motionless as stone. Sitting down, he bent over to look into her face. Her unfathomable eyes, wide and dark and strained, stirred his heart as never before. They were eyes to which sleep was a stranger—haunted eyes, like the strange midnight at which they gazed out, supernaturally bright, mirroring the dim stars, beautiful as the waking dreams never to come true—eyes of melancholy, of unutterable passion, of deathless spirit. They were the eyes of woman and of love.
Adam took her wasted hand and held it while waiting for the wind to lull so that she could hear him speak. At length the hot blast moved on, like the receding of a fire.
“Magdalene, I can’t stand this any longer,” he said.
“You mean—these winds—of hell?” she panted, in a whisper.
“No. I mean your suffering. I might have stood your spiritual ordeal. Your remorse—your agony of loss of the daughter Ruth—your brave spirit defying Virey’s hate.... But I can’t stand your physical torment. You’re wasting away. You’re withering—burning up. This hand is hot as fire—and dry as a leaf. You must drink more water.... Magdalene, lift your head.”
“I—cannot,” she whispered, with wan smile. “No—strength left.”
Adam lifted her head and gave her water to drink. Then as he laid her back another blast of wind came roaring through the strange opaque night. How it moaned and wailed around the huge bowlders and through the brush! It was a dance of wind fiends, hounding the lost spirits of this valley of horrors. Adam felt the slow, tight tide of his blood called stingingly to his skin and his extremities, and there it burned. It was not only his heart and his lungs that were oppressed, but the very life of his body seemed to be pressing to escape through the pores of his skin—pressed from inward by the terrible struggle to survive and pressed back from outside by the tremendous blast of wind! The wind roared by and lulled to a moan. The wave of invisible fire passed on. Out there in the dim starlight Virey staggered back and forth under the too great burden of his fate. He made no sound. He was a specter. Beyond the gray level of gloom with its strange shadows rose the immense slope of loose stones, all shining with dim, pale-red glow, all seemingly alive, waiting for the slide of the avalanche. And on the instant a rock cracked with faint ring, rolled with little hollow reports, mockingly, full of terrible and latent power. It had ominous answer in a slight jar of the earth under Adam’s feet, perhaps an earthquake settling of the crust, and then the whole vast slope moved with a low, grating sound, neither roar nor crash, nor rattle. The avalanche had slipped a foot. Adam could have pealed out a cry of dread for this woman. What a ghastly fantasy the struggle for life in Death Valley! What mockery of wind and desert and avalanche!
“Wansfell—listen,” whispered the woman. “Do you hear—it passing on?”
“Yes,” replied Adam, bending lower to see her eyes. Did she mean that the roar of wind was dying away?