From where she sat with the unconscious man’s head in her lap, she looked at him, wonderingly.  “Good-by?” she repeated questioningly.

Henry Marston smiled grimly.  “Certainly, good-by What else is there for me?”

A moment later, she saw him running swiftly down the mountainside, like some hunted creature of the wilderness.

Chapter XXXIX

The Better Way

Alone on the mountainside with the man who had awakened the pure passion of her woman heart, Sibyl Andres bent over the unconscious object of her love.  She saw his face, unshaven, grimy with the dirt of the trail and the sweat of the fight, drawn and thin with the mental torture that had driven him beyond the limit of his physical strength; she saw how his clothing was stained and torn by contact with sharp rocks and thorns and bushes; she saw his hands—­the hands that she had watched at their work upon her portrait as she stood among the roses—­cut and bruised, caked with blood and dirt—­and, seeing these things, she understood.

In that brief moment when she had watched Aaron King in the struggle upon the ledge,—­and, knowing that he was fighting for her, had realized her love for him,—­all that Mrs. Taine had said to her in the studio was swept away.  The cruel falsehoods, the heartless misrepresentations, the vile accusations that had caused her to seek the refuge of the mountains and the protection of her childhood friends were, in the blaze of her awakened passion, burned to ashes; her cry to the convict—­“I love him, I love him”—­was more than an expression of her love; it was a triumphant assertion of her belief in his love for her—­it was her answer to the evil seeing world that could not comprehend their fellowship.

As the life within the man forced him slowly toward consciousness, the girl, natural as always in the full expression of herself, bent over him with tender solicitude.  With endearing words, she kissed his brow, his hair, his hands.  She called his name in tones of affection.  “Aaron, Aaron, Aaron.”  But when she saw that he was about to awake, she deftly slipped off her jacket and, placing it under his head, drew a little back.

He opened his eyes and looked wonderingly up at the dark pines that clothed the mountainsides.  His lips moved and she heard her name; “Sibyl, Sibyl.”

She leaned forward, eagerly, her cheeks glowing with color.  “Yes, Mr. King.”

“Am I dreaming, again?” he said slowly, gazing at her as though struggling to command his senses.

“No, Mr. King,” she answered cheerily, “you are not dreaming.”