He ought to have spoken to her. Perhaps she could not speak
to him. He wheeled suddenly in the path to return to the cabin,
and stopped still.
Something was hurrying down through the undergrowth of the
cliffside which towered darkly behind him. Nearer and nearer the
bushes crackled as though some hunted animal were flying for life
through them, and then through the laurel-hedge burst the figure of
a woman, who sank to the ground in the path be-fore him. The
flash of yellow hair and a white face in the moonlight told him
who it was.
"Easter, Easter! " he exclaimed, in sickening fear. "My God! is
that you? Why, what is the matter, child? What are you doing
here?"
He stooped above the sobbing girl, and pulled away her hands
from her face, tear-stained and broken with pain. The limit of her
self-repression was reached at last; the tense nerves, strained too
much, had broken; and the passion, so long checked, surged
through her like fire. Ah, God! what had he done? He saw the
truth at last. In an impulse of tenderness he lifted the girl to her
feet and held her, sobbing uncontrollably, in his arms, with her
head against his breast, and his cheek on her hair, soothing her as
though she had been a child.
Presently she felt a kiss on her forehead. She looked up with a
sudden fierce joy in her eyes, and their lips met.
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