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Next day her grave was dug, there, upon that endless plain of silence. Eric had strewn the gaping hole with a lining of withered leaves, gathered from the weeping forest.

Before they hid her marvellous face out of sight he had passionately covered its mask of beauty with desperate burning kisses. Zorka had stood close by, guarding him from hostile glances, so that this heartbroken lover might be for a last time alone with what had been the dream of his life.

Then from his shoulders he took the torn black cloak he had worn during all his wanderings and draped it round those rigid limbs that froze his blood with their icy coldness.

"Mother, dear old mother," he cried, "I want to keep her warm; the night before last she glowed in the arms of my passion, and now I must leave her to the chill mercy of the frozen ground. How can I bear such torture?"

Zorka laid her withered hand upon his shoulder.

"Son, my son, I feel that no ice can harm her more—she looked upon the flames of Love, and died whilst they were folded round her; she closed her eyes upon the vision of thy burning worship, and that wonderful sweetness was the last thing she saw; now she is for ever happy."

So Eric wound her from head to foot in the dark folds of his mantle; he hid away her white hands and her tiny feet. Then he pressed the wreath of thorns over the dusky drapery, placing the gleaming gem in the centre of her forehead. He fetched her dear violin and laid it so that her toes just touched its polished wood.

Over the shabby black tissue of the weather-beaten vestment he spread the faded wreaths that once had rested upon her rippling hair. And after one long look of farewell he allowed the heavy lid to be shut down on his hard-won happiness.

The damp earth was thrown with a hollow thud over the lid of the coffin, the ground was beaten down smooth and flat on every side, so that no wandering stranger should ever disturb her deep dark grave beneath its covering of sombre soil.

The gypsies folded their tents with hasty rapidity, longing to steal away from a place where silence brooded amongst the whispering winds.

Old Zorka came and stood upon the spot where her darling had been hidden for ever away, and there she murmured all the prayers she could call back to her flagging memory, whilst her streaming tears mixed with the mould that lay over that past dream of beauty.

But no persuasion nor entreaty could make Eric move from that dark mound in the barren lonely wild; he meant to remain there that first night when she had been confided to the indifferent shadows that closed in around her.

He promised Zorka he would follow next day, but this night he must lie on Stella's cold grave, to protect it from the biting frost.

When all had gone and he was alone on that dreary vastness, he drew from its sheath his treasured sword and planted it like a cross, there where her eyes must be hidden away, never more to look upon the rising sun.

Dreary blasts of wind blew over the gloomy desert; darkness came down and Eric stretched himself upon the frozen ground, his lips pressed upon the spot where, far beneath the heavy covering of soil, her beautiful mouth must have been.

There he lay, forsaken, the only breathing being in that cruel night of sorrow. But not far off, amongst the dim shadows of the forest, the snowy falcon was faithfully watching, though the glinting light no longer shone on his breast, watching till day should mercifully break.

Through the heavy hours Eric never moved; he was fighting alone a dreary battle against life and his God. Nor did he know, as his face lay hidden in his clenched hands, that the magic hilt of the sword was glowing like a shining promise far over the sleeping world. There it stood, a cross of flame, burning with sacred light, watching over this desperate mortal who longed to cast his life away.

The wind howled with voices of terror and storm; the dust was whirled in clouds from the frozen waste, sweeping over the cross-shaped light and over the weeping man, trying to blot them out of sight.

But deep down in eternal night, under the protecting arms of her lover, rested Stella in stony quiet, bedded in the lap of old Mother Earth.

Beneath her closed lids her starry eyes were for ever guarding the last dear vision her waking brain had looked upon.

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