ow--which may be
perdition. They wish to live under that look for ever. It is the look
of woman's surrender.

He understood, and, as if suddenly released from his invisible bonds,
fell at her feet with a shout of joy, and, embracing her knees, hid his
head in the folds of her dress, murmuring disjointed words of gratitude
and love. Never before had he felt so proud as now, when at the feet of
that woman that half belonged to his enemies. Her fingers played with
his hair in an absent-minded caress as she stood absorbed in thought. The
thing was done. Her mother was right. The man was her slave. As she
glanced down at his kneeling form she felt a great pitying tenderness for
that man she was used to call--even in her thoughts--the master of life.
She lifted her eyes and looked sadly at the southern heavens under which
lay the path of their lives--her own, and that man's at her feet. Did he
not say himself is that she was the light of his life? She would be his
light and his wisdom; she would be his greatness and his strength; yet
hidden from the eyes of all men she would be, above all, his only and
lasting weakness. A very woman! In the sublime vanity of her kind she
was thinking already of moulding a god from the clay at her feet. A god
for others to worship. She was content to see him as he was now, and to
feel him quiver at the slightest touch of her light fingers. And while
her eyes looked sadly at the southern stars a faint smile seemed to be
playing about her firm lips. Who can tell in the fitful light of a camp
fire? It might have been a smile of triumph, or of conscious power, or
of tender pity, or, perhaps, of love.

She spoke softly to him, and he rose to his feet, putting his arm round
her in quiet consciousness of his ownership; she laid her head on his
shoulder with a sense of defiance to all the world in the encircling
protection of that arm. He was hers with all his qualities and all his
faults. His strength and his courage, his recklessness and his daring,
his simple wisdom and his savage cunning--all were hers. As they passed
together out of the red light of the fire into the silver shower of rays
that fell upon the clearing he bent his head over her face, and she saw
in his eyes the dreamy intoxication of boundless felicity from the close
touch of her slight figure clasped to his side. With a rhythmical swing
of their bodies they walked through the light towards the outlying
shadows