Page 298 (1/1)

Life! Life again, and light, the sun and the fresh winds of heaven, the perfect azure of a June sky, the perfu the lips of the chas of hidden birds within the wood to eastward--life, beauty, love--such, the sunrise hour when Allan and the girl once more stood side by side in the outer world, delivered from the perils of the black Abyss

Hardly htmare now, the terrible fall into those depths, the captivity ahastly scenes of war, the labors, the perilous escape

All seemed to fall and fade away from these two lovers, all save their joy in life and in each other, their longing for the inevitable greater passion, pain and joy, their clear-eyed outlook into the vast and limitless possibilities of the future, their future and the world's

And as they stood there, hand in hand beside the body of the fallen patriarch--he whose soul had passed in peace, even at the e of the sun--awe overcaled with reverent adoration, Stern drew the girl once htened about his neck He kissed her brow beneath the parted masses of her wondrous hair His lips rested a ht hers and burned its passion into her very soul

Suddenly she pushed hione white; she trembled in his clasp

"Oh, your kiss--oh, Allan, what is this I feel?--it see her full bosom where her heart leaped like a prisoned creature "Your kiss--it is so different now! No, no--not again--not yet!"

He released her, for he, too was shaking in the grip of new, fierce passions

"Forgive ot ht, Beatrice A thousand things are pressing to be done And love--e of the chas far down and away, et himself in leash once more

Then suddenly he turned and sotten Let's get to work The whole world's waiting for us, for our labor It's eager for our toil!"

She nodded In her eyes the fire had died, and now only the light of coain