"Made it, by Heaven!" he exulted. "But a few feet more and it wouldn't have been--well, no matter. We're here, anyhow. Now, supper and a good sleep. And to-morrow, the cathedral!"
He helped the girl alight, for she was cramped and stiff. Presently their camp-fire cheered the down-drawing gloom, as so many other times in such strange places. And before long their evening meal was in course of preparation, close by a great glacial boulder at the edge of the sand-barren.
In good comradeship they ate, then wheeled the biplane over to the rock, and under the shelter of its wide-spreading wings made their camp for the night. An hour or so they sat talking of many things--their escape from the Abyss, the patriarch's death, their trip east again, the loss of their little home, their plans, their hopes, their work.
Beatrice seemed to grieve more than Stern over the destruction of the bungalow. So much of her woman's heart had gone into the making of that nest, so many thoughts had centered on a return to it once more, that now when it lay in ruins through the spiteful mischief of the Horde, she found sorrow knocking insistently at the gates of her soul. But Allan comforted her as best he might.
"Never you mind, little girl!" said he bravely. "It's only an incident, after all. A year from now another and a still more beautiful home will shelter us in some more secure location. And there'll be human companionship, too, about us. In a year many of the Folk will have been brought from the depths. In a year miracles may happen--even the greatest one of all!"
Her eyes met his a moment by the ruddy fire-glow and held true.
"Yes," answered she, "even the greatest in the world!"
A sudden tenderness swept over him at thought of all that had been and was still to be, at sight of this woman's well-loved face irradiated by the leaping blaze--her face now just a little wan with long fatigues and sad as though with realization, with some compelling inner sense of vast, impending responsibilities.
He gathered her in his strong arms, he drew her yielding body close, and kissed her very gently.
"To-morrow!" he whispered. "Do you realize it?"
"To-morrow," she made answer, her breath mingling with his. "To-morrow, Allan--one page of life forever closed, another opened. Oh, may it be for good--may we be very strong and very wise!"
Neither spoke for the space of a few heart-beats, while the wind made a vague, melancholy music in the sentinel tree-tops and the snapping sparks danced upward by the rock.