And run she did, when she had crested the first ridge and had started down the far side.  It was like flying!  The crisp air cut her glowing cheeks; her blood leaped along her veins; she breathed deeply, a great, uplifting elation bore her along.  Love—­God is love—­smoothed the way before her; the stars ran with her, the great blazing stars to which again and again she lifted her eyes.  They spoke to her; they came close to her; when she stopped, resting, they were all about her, bending down, and she was lifted up among them.  Fervour and the ecstasy of the hour in which was doing to the uttermost, forgetful of pettiness and selfishness and cowardice—­she prayed mutely that she was done with them for ever, that never again would she be such a woman as Gratton had been a man—­made her over into a radiant, glorious Gloria.  The night stamped itself upon her for all time; out of the night she drew, as one draws air into his lungs, a new faith that was akin to the man’s whom she served.  For one cannot be alone with the stars and be unmoved by them; they are serene with eternity, refulgent with the perfect beauty of a perfect creation, eloquent to the heart of man and woman of true values.  Under the fields of their vastitude, confronted by their infinity, Gloria, like thousands before, understood that man in fevered times is prone to turn to false gods.  Gus Ingle’s gold—­her own gold, one day—­was a thing to smile at.  Or, at best, not a thing to expend wildly for gowns and gowns and shoes and stockings and limousines; to-night Gloria felt that she had had her fill of vanities like those, that she was done with them; that if, for every moan and agony and slow death and thought of envy Gus Ingle’s gold had brought into the world, she could create a smile here and a hope fulfilled there and a glow yonder, she would ask nothing else of the yellow dirt.  For dirt or rock or dross it was, and that was as clear as starlight.  If her hand but lay in the hand of Mark King, what did gold matter?  Or dresses—­or what people thought or said of her or him?  A strange little smile touched her lips.

“I love you,” she whispered, as though Mark were with her—­as in her soul he was.

Had there not been a great, glowing love in her heart she would have been afraid.  But there was no room for fear.  Had she not felt that he was with her and that God was with her she must have felt an unutterable, dreary loneliness; but she was upborne at every step and gloried in every exertion.

And exertion, until she came close to the limits of endurance, was to be hers that white night; hers the knowledge of supreme endeavour.  On and on she went across the immense glistening smooth fields through which the trail ahead was the only scar, through groves of black pines whispering, whispering, whispering, down into shadow-filled canons, out into the open again, up and down and on and on, a tiny dot upon the endless wastes.  Fatigue came upon her suddenly,