She obeyed and her warning fingers clasped his more closely as together they descended the path of light traced out before them by his electric torch.
Down, down, down they went under hard-wood and evergreen, across little fissures full of fern, skirting great slabs of rock, making detours where tangles checked progress.
Through tree-tops the sky glittered--one vast sheet of stars; and in the forest was a pale lustre born of this celestial splendour--a pallid dimness like that unreal day which reigns in the regions of the dead.
"We might meet the shade of Helen here," said the girl, "or of Eurydice. This is a realm of spirits. ... We may be one with them very soon--you and I. Do you suppose we shall wander here among these trees as long as time lasts?"
"It's all right if we're together, Yellow-hair."
There was no accent from his fingers clasped in hers; none in hers either.
"I hope we'll be together, then," she said.
"Will you search for me, Yellow-hair?"
"Yes. Will you, Kay?"
"Always."
"And I--always--until I find you or you find me." ... Presently she laughed gaily under her breath: "A solemn bargain, isn't it?"
"More solemn than marriage."
"Yes," said the girl faintly.
Something went crashing off into the woods as they reached the hogback which linked them with the group of pines whither the big game-bird had pitched into cover. Perhaps it was a roe deer; McKay flashed the direction in vain.
"If it were a Boche?" she whispered.
"No; it sounded like a four-legged beast. There are chamois and roe deer and big mountain hares along these heights."
They went on until the hog-back of sheer rock loomed straight ahead, and beyond, against a paling sky, the clump of high pines toward which they were bound.
McKay extinguished his torch and pocketed it.
"The sun will lead us back, Yellow-hair," he whispered. "Now hold very tightly to my hand, for it's a slippery and narrow way we tread together."
The rocks were glassy. But there were bushes and mosses; and presently wild grass and soil on the other side.
All around them, now, the tall pines loomed, faintly harmonious in the rising morning breeze which, in fair weather, always blows DOWN from the upper peaks into the valleys. Into the shadows they passed together a little way; then halted. The girl rested one shoulder against a great pine, leaning there and facing him where he also rested, listening.
There reigned in the woods that intense stillness which precedes dawn--an almost painful tension resembling apprehension. Always the first faint bird-note breaks it; then silence ends like a deep sigh exhaling and death seems very far away.