They reached the threshold.  Guy was stumbling blindly.  He seemed to be dazed, scarcely conscious of his surroundings.  The turmoil of the water was terrific through the ceaseless rush of the rain.  With heads bent to the storm they forced their way out into the tumult.

They found Diamond tramping and snorting with fright at the back of the hut, but to Burke’s brief command and Sylvia’s touch he stood still.

“Get up!” Burke said to the girl.

But she started and drew back.  “Oh no—­no!” she cried back to him.  “I will go on foot.”

He said no more, merely turned and hoisted Guy upwards.  He landed in the saddle, instinctively gripping with his knees while Burke on one side, Sylvia on the other, set his feet in the stirrups.

Then still in that utter silence Burke went back to Sylvia.  He had lifted her before she was aware, and for one breathless moment he held her.  Then she also was up on the horse’s back.  He thrust her hands away from him, pushing them into Guy’s belt with a mastery that would brook no resistance.

“Wake up!” he yelled to Guy, and smote him on the thigh as he dragged the bridle free.

Then, slipping and sliding on the yielding ground, he pulled the horse round, gave the rein, into Guy’s clutching hand, and struck the animal smartly on the flank.  Diamond squealed and sprang forward bearing his double burden, and in a moment he was off, making for the higher ground and the track that led to the farm, terrified yet blindly following the instinct that does not err.

The sound of the scrambling, struggling hoofs was lost in the strife of waters, the swaying figures disappeared in the gloom, and the man who was left behind turned grimly and went back into the empty hut.

The candle still cast a flickering light over table and bed.  He stood with his back to the raging night and stared at the unsteady flame.  It was screened from extinction in the draught by a standing photograph-frame.  The picture this contained was turned away from him.  After a moment it caught his attention.  He moved round the table.  Though Death were swooping towards him, swift and certain, on the wings of the rising current, he was drawn as a needle to the magnet.  Like a dying man, he reached for the last draught that should slake his thirst and give him peace in dying.

He leaned upon the table, that creaked and shook beneath his weight.  He stretched forth his arms on each side of the candle, and drew the portrait close to the flame.  Sylvia’s face laughed at him through the shifting, uncertain light.  She was standing on a wind-blown open space.  Her lips were parted.  He thought he heard her voice, calling him.  And the love in her eyes—­the love that shone through the laughter!  It held him like a spell—­even though it was not for him.

He gazed earnestly upon this thing that had been another man’s treasure long before he had even seen her, and as he gazed, he forgot all beside.  By that supreme sacrifice of self, he had wiped out all but his exceeding love for her.  The spirit had triumphed over the flesh.  Love the Immortal to which Death is but a small thing had lifted him up above the world. . . .