The remote sounds, caught by the man's trained ear, were now audible to the women. They arose. The Marchesa Soderrelli moved over to where the Duke stood looking up at the sky.

"They are coming," she said.

The man did not answer, and he did not move. The sounds, carried down to them on the night air, grew louder. The Marchesa became impatient.

"We must go on," she said.

The words, the tone of the woman's voice, were urgent. But the Duke remained with his face lifted to the tree tops. Presently, he turned swiftly and handed the rifle to Caroline Childers.

"We must try it now," he said, "while the moon is under that cloud. Each of you give me your hand."

The two women instantly obeyed, and the three persons went hurriedly down the bank into the river. The whole world was now dark. The man thus entered the water, between the two women; he held each by the wrist, his arms extended. It was the only way to cross the river swiftly, and to be certain that neither woman was carried away by the current. Caroline Childers was above with the rifle. The Marchesa Soderrelli was below. The wisdom of the Duke's plan was at once apparent. Neither of the women could have kept her footing without his aid; thus held, they managed to reach the middle of the river, and would doubtless have crossed without accident had the rock bed continued smooth. But there is to be found in the beds of rivers, especially when seamed with cracks, a species of green slimy fungus, clinging to these cracks, and streaming out below, slippery, like wisps of coarse hair boiled in soap.

As they approached the opposite shore, the Marchesa trod on one of these bits of fungus and fell. The current, at that point, was swift, but the water was shallow. Her knee struck heavily on the rock. The Duke held her, but she seemed unable to get again to her feet; her body swung out with the current; the river was intensely dark. Fortunately, in the shallow water, Caroline Childers managed to get ashore without the Duke's assistance; and having now his other arm free, he was able to lift the Marchesa, and carry her out of the river. He did not stop on the bank; he went on across the road, and into the wood beyond, still carrying the Marchesa Soderrelli. Caroline Childers followed with the rifle.

The wood, skirting the foot of the mountains, was here less densely packed than on the other side of the river. The Duke wished to cross it into the deeps of the forest before the moon emerged. He walked with tremendous strides in spite of his burden and in spite of the darkness. The ground under foot was open, and he was able to cross the strip of wood to the foot of the mountain before the moon came out. He stopped and put the woman down. There was a little light entering among the trees, although neither the road nor the river could be seen.

The Marchesa was not able to determine the extent of her injuries. The blow had been on the left knee; she did not think that any bone was broken, nevertheless, the joint gave way when she tried to get up. The three persons fully realized the alarming extent of this misfortune. Still no one spoke of it. Caroline Childers wanted to stop here, but the Duke insisted that they go on. He put his arm around the Marchesa, and she tried to walk. But she presently gave it up and sat down. Caroline Childers now insisted that they should stop; perhaps the Marchesa might be able to walk when the knee was rested. The Duke refused. He pointed out that the leg, if not broken, would presently be stiff, and more painful than it now was; that they were still so close to the road that beaters would easily find them; that the rising clouds indicated rain; and that the mountain would be infinitely harder to climb if the moss and leaves were wet. Moreover, he could not determine the lie of the mountains from this valley, and he wished to be high enough to locate directions when the dawn arrived.

He announced his intention to carry the disabled woman. The Marchesa protested. The Duke simply paid no attention. He took her up, and set out through the mountains. The forest grew more dense; the ascent became more difficult; still the man went on without slacking his pace. Sometimes he paused to rest, holding the woman on his knee; sometimes he put her down while he tried to discover the lie of the mountain. But he refused to stop, and always he continued to advance.

Usage, training, the rigor of discipline long followed toughen and strengthen the human body to an excellence past belief. This man carried the woman, hour after hour, up the mountain, through the fir forest, and he traveled quite as fast with his unwieldy burden as the girl behind him was able to do with no weight except that of the rifle. The night lengthened and darkened. The morning began to approach. Still black tree trunk followed black tree trunk, and the brown moss carpet under their feet stretched upward. The air, instead of cooling with the dawn, became warmer. A thin mist of rain began to fall. Presently the contour of the ground changed; the carpet became level; more light entered among the trees, and they came out into a bit of open.

It was now morning. They came into an ancient clearing; a patch once cut out by some pioneer's ax; the scar of an old wound, that the wilderness had taken from the invader. The blackened stumps still stood about, fragments of charred tree tops remained; and in the center of the clearing stood a log cabin, roofed with clapboards, its door fallen from its wooden hinges, its chimney, built of crossed sticks, daubed between with clay, tumbled down, but the hewn logs and the clapboards, split with the grain of the wood, remained.

The Duke crossed the bit of open and entered the cabin. It was dry, and covered with leaves carried in through the door by the wind. The three persons were scarcely under the protection of this shelter, when the threatening rain began to fall. It was one of those rains common to the coast line. There was no wind; the atmosphere seemed to form itself into a drenching mist that descended through the trees.

The Marchesa Soderrelli complained of pain in the injured knee, and the two women determined to improvise a bandage. The Duke arose and went out into the clearing. The forest was beginning to steam, and he wished, if possible, to get the lie of the mountain range before they were hemmed in with mist. The two women improvised a bandage from a petticoat ruffle, and bound the knee as tightly as they could. They did not talk; both were greatly fatigued, and both realized the desperate situation. They did not discuss it, but each prepared to meet it, in her own manner, with resolution.

When the Duke had got the points of the compass, he was not disturbed about what ought to be done. He knew that as soon as the two women were a bit rested, they should at once go on. It would be a day of fatigue and hunger; but no one of them would die of hunger in a day, and by night he hoped to come in sight of the coast. Then they could stop and meet the problem of food.

He was going back into the cabin to explain the necessities of this plan, when the Marchesa Soderrelli called him. He entered. Caroline Childers was standing, leaning against the logs by the tumbled-in fireplace; the Marchesa Soderrelli sat on the ground among the leaves; both, in physical aspect, had paid their tribute to the wilderness. The girl's hair and eyes seemed to dominate her face; the soft indiscriminate things, common to youth, were gone; she had become, in the eight hours departed, a woman, acquainted with the bitterness of fife, and facing its renunciations. The Marchesa Soderrelli, sitting on the floor of the abandoned cabin, was an old woman, her face flabby, her body fallen into baggy lines. But the spirit in her was unshaken, and her voice was compact and decisive.

"I wish to speak to you, my friend," she said; "won't you please sit down?"

The man looked from one woman to the other and sat down on the corner of a log, jutting out from the door wall. For the last half of this night, he had been, upon one point, content. He was like one who, desiring a thing above all others, and despairing of his ability to obtain it, finds that thing seized upon by a horde of brutal and hideous events and thrust into his arms. He stood now, past the outposts of uncertainty, with the possession in his hand.

Those under the oldest superstition in the world warn us that such a moment is above all others perilous. That it is the habit of Destiny to wait with fatal patience until one's life swims over this mark, and then, rising, like a whaler to drive in the iron.

The Marchesa Soderrelli continued, like one who has a final and difficult thing to say.

"My friend," she began, "I am a woman, and consequently you must expect me to go round about in what I have to say, and you must forgive me when I seem unreasonable."

She lifted her hands and put back her hair.

"I have no religion, as that word is generally defined, but I have a theory of life. I got it out of a book when I was little. In that book the disciples of a wise man came to him and said: 'Master, we can endure no longer being bound to this body, giving it food and drink, and resting it and cleansing it, and going about to court one man after another for its sake. Is not death no evil? Let us depart to whence we came.' And he answered them: 'Doth it smoke in the chamber? If it is not very much I will stay. If too much, I will go out; for remember this always, and hold fast to it that the door is open.' Well, the smoke has come to be intolerable."

She moved in the leaves.

"I have tested my fortune again and again as that wise man said one ought to do. There can be no longer any doubt. It is time for me to go."

The woman looked from the man to the girl standing by the chimney. Her eyes were appealing.

"You must forgive me," she said, "but you must believe me, and you must try to understand me. I want you and Caroline to go on."

She put up her hand.

"No, please hear me to the end of it. I know how the proposal looks to you. It seems cruel. But is it? I am come to the door, and I am going out through it. Is it not more cruel to force me to put my own hand to the latch?"

The woman paused. She sat huddled together in the leaves; there was something old, fated, irrevocable in the pose of her figure.

"I beg of you," she added, "as my friends, to spare me that."

The mist streaming up from the soaked forest lay in the cabin. It gathered about the woman on the floor. Presently she went on:

"I am afraid that I cannot make you see how completely I am done with life, but I will try. So long as one has a thing to love, or a thing to do in this world, the desire to remain here is a strong and moving impulse in him. But when these two things go, that desire also goes. And the loss of it is the sign—the beck to the door. That old wise man made it very clear, I think. He said: 'Another hath made the play, and not thee, and hath given thee thy lines to speak, and thou art not concerned, except to speak them well, and at the end of them to go.... And why shouldst thou wish to remain after that, until He, who conducts the play, shall come and thrust thee off?'"

"Now," she continued, "I have come to the end of my lines. They have not always been very pleasant lines. But I have contrived to speak them with a sort of courage. And I would not now be shamed before the Manager."

She peered through the thickening mist, as through a smoke, straining her eyes to see the face of the man by the door, the girl by the chimney; but she could not, and she tried a further argument.

"You must be fair to me," she said, "look at the situation. I cannot go on, that is certain, and for the two of you to remain here, on my account, is to charge me with your death. Dear me! I have enough on the debit side of the ledger without that."

The woman's head oscillated on her shoulders. Her right hand wrung the fingers of her left. She considered for a moment, her chin fallen on her bosom. Then she sat up, like one under the impulse of some final and desperate hazard.

"I am going to ask each of you a question," she said, "and I entreat you, as one in the presence of death, to answer the truth. And let it be a test between us."

Then she leaned forward, straining through the mist, to the Duke of Dorset.

"My friend," she said, "can you think of any interest in this life that you would like to follow; any plan that you would like to carry out; any hope that you would like to realize? because I cannot, and if you can, it is I, and not you who should remain here."

There was absolute silence. The wet mist continued to enter, to obscure, to separate each of the three persons. The man did not reply, and the Marchesa swung around toward the dim figure of the girl, standing by the ruined chimney. The leaves crackled under the woman's body. She rested on her hand.

"Caroline," she said, "a man may have many interests in life, but we do not. With us all roads lead through the heart. Now, if you have any affection for any living man, you must go on. I make it the test before God. If you have, you must go. If you have not, you may remain. But I have the right to the truth—the right of one about to decide who shall live and who shall not live."

The man at the door arose slowly to his feet, as under the pressure of a knife, breaking the skin between his shoulders. Every fiber in him trembled. Every muscle in his body stood out. Every pore sweated. The shadow of the descending iron was black on him.

But if this question disturbed Caroline Childers, there was now no evidence of it. She replied at once, without pause, without equivocation.

"I shall remain with you," she said.

The Marchesa Soderrelli, sitting on the floor among the leaves, bit her lip, until the blood flowed under her teeth.

The man, standing by the door, did not move. The mist mercifully hid him; it packed itself into the cabin. The three persons changed into gray indefinite figures, into mere outlines, into nothing. The mist became a sort of darkness. It became also a dense, tangible thing, like cotton-wool, that obscured and deadened sound.

Something presently entered the clearing from the forest, tramped about in it, and finally approached the door.