She was not sure of his sanity; not certain that a fever, bred of his wounds, was not burning into his marrow. _And yet_----
"It's dawn, I tell you! We boil our coffee, we pick up a mouthful of food. And then we move on! And why? Because we're sure to have callers here in another day or so, and just now I don't want other people; I want you, girl, and only you and the rest of the world can go to pot!... And now we go!"
Lynette, in a mood to expect anything of fate, wondered vaguely where the steep trail of adventure now led. She would not have been surprised had Standing set his plans for some spot a hundred miles distant. But she was surprised to arrive so soon, after only two or three hours, at their destination. He looked at her, exulting.
"Here is Eden!" he cried out joyously. "Remember the name, girl; bestowed upon this spot no longer ago than this very minute! Eden! And as far from the world as that other distant Eden. Here we stop and here no man finds us!"
He had led the way, upward along a rocky slope. He had brought her into a spot which she would have named "The Land of Waterfalls!" A tiny valley with a sparkling mountain creek cleaving like flowing crystal through a grassy meadow; tall trees, noble patriarchs bounding it. Steep cañon walls shutting in the timber growth; a narrow ravine above with the water leaping, plunging, tumbling translucent green over jagged rocks, splashing into a series of pools, turned into rainbow spray here and there in its wild cascadings. The world all about was murmurous with living waters, with bees, with the eternal whisperings of the pines.
And here began an idyl; a strange idyl. A man asserting his power as captor; a maid made captive; two souls wide awake, questing, swung from certainty to uncertainty, gathered up in doubt. Life grown a thing of tremendous import.
All morning had Standing been wracked with pain. Yet none the less did he hold unswervingly to his purpose. Now he sat down, his back to a tree. Thor came and lay at his feet. Lynette stood looking down upon the two.
"Rest," he said. "Here is your home for a time. A day? Ten days? Who knows? Not I, girl! All that I know I have told you; here we rest and here we take life into our hands and mould it ... as we have always moulded it! We are at the gates; we enter or we turn to one side! We go on or we go back. Which? When we know that, we know everything."