“Shall I ever forget you—­you, and this evening?”

Her eyelids quivered, and she bowed her head.

“Kyllikki!” he cried desperately.  “Would you hide your eyes from me?—­Kyllikki....”  There was hope and doubt in his eyes; he loosed his hold of her hands, and clasped his own as if questioningly about her waist.

The girl was trembling.  She laid her hands on his shoulders, and then slowly twined her arms about his neck.

A tumult of delight came over him.  He pressed her to him fervently, lifting her off her feet—­her arms drew closer round him.

He saw the look in her eyes change—­giddiness seized him, and he set her down.

“May I...?” he asked, with his eyes.

Her eyes consented—­and their lips met....

When at last he let her go, the girl’s face was changed almost beyond recognition.  On her under lip showed a tiny drop of blood.

A cry of dismay rose up in him, but remained unuttered.  A strange intoxication overpowered him—­the red drop there was the seal of a friendship deeper and more mysterious than all else—­in a wild kiss he drank the blood from her lip.  He felt himself on the point of swooning—­and wished the world would end there, in that moment.

He could not speak—­he did not know whether to stay or go.  A darkness seemed to close about him, and he staggered off like a drunken man, without looking back.

THE CAMP-FIRE AT NEITOKALLIO

A league of swift-flowing river, almost straight, with gently sloping meadows, forest-crowned, on either hand.

A grand, impressive sight at all seasons.  In autumn, the swollen waters pour down as from a cornucopia; in winter, folk from the town come driving over the frozen flood, racing one against another; in spring, the river overflows its banks, spreading silt on the meadows as in the land of the Nile; and in summer, the haymakers are lulled by the song of the grasshoppers and the scent of the hay to dream of paradise, where the children of men even now may enter in for some few days in every year.

A league of river, a league of meadow land—­but at one spot two great rocks stand out as if on guard.

One rises from the very verge, the water lapping its foot as it stands dreaming and gazing over to its fellow of the farther side.  Neitokallio is its name.

The other is more cold and proud.  It stands drawn back a little way from the bank, with head uplifted as in challenge, looking out through the treetops across the plain.  And this is Valimaki.

At the foot of Valimaki a camp-fire was burning.  It was midnight.  A group of lumbermen were gathered round the fire, some lying stretched out with knapsacks under their heads, some leaning one against another.  Blue clouds of smoke curled up from their pipes.

The red fire glowed and glowed, flaring up now and again into bright flame, tinging the fir stems on the slope as if with blood, and throwing weird reflections out on to the dark waters of the river.  The men sat in silence over their pipes.