A new impulse drew them now more closely together. Side by side, pressed closely to each other, they travelled swiftly toward Sho Kon Sha. They dared not wait to eat, to sleep, to rest but a moment, and the night found them still moving onward.

They spoke scarcely at all to each other; but she rested like a child in the curve of his arm, her head against his breast. Once she sighed, ever so faintly—a little breath of weariness that escaped her almost unconsciously.

Instantly he stopped, lifted her face in his hands, and, in the dark woods, anxiously examined it.

“You are crying, Tama.”

“No-o,” she said.

“But your face is wet.”

“It is the dew upon my face,” she said.

Again they moved onward. About them towered the giant trees, silhouetted against the starlit skies. Sometimes as the ascent became more steep, they clung to outjutting shrubs and bushes, and once when he fancied her footsteps slightly dragged, he lifted her bodily in his arms and carried her for a space. But she begged to be permitted to walk. There was still a great distance to go. He must not be hampered by her burden. She wished to help—not hinder him.

The night grew more still, and a penetrating chill descended about them. He drew off his coat, to put about her; but she showed him where she had strapped to her back, with the string of her obi, the quilt. He had thought it part of her sash, and was all compunction that he had permitted her to carry even so slight a load. She laughed in her little tremulous way, and challenged him to untie the knot. In the dark his big, clumsy fingers picked at it in vain. Again she laughed, caressingly, with a teasing tenderness, and she drew the little bundle round in front. It fell at her feet in a soft, silken heap.

He was for wrapping it several times around her; but she insisted she would not proceed even the fraction of a step unless he shared the quilt with her. And so, his arm again about her, under the down-padded temple quilt, they moved along in the chilly darkness, defying with the new warmth of their hearts and bodies the cold of the autumn night.

Thus all night long they travelled, their feet moving mechanically, but never unwillingly, pausing not at all to look backward over the paths they had followed, but pressing steadily onward toward their goal. And the first pale streak of dawn found them climbing up the last height, within the very sight of Sho Kon Sha.