Across the abyss he flung his tremendous challenge, the laugh still on his lips and in his eyes the blazing derision that mocks at fate.

And as she heard it, the girl’s heart suddenly failed her.  She began to tremble.  Yet, even so, she made a last desperate bid for pride and freedom.

She clutched at the cold stones on each side of her with nerveless, quivering fingers.  “There is—­no bond between us!” she gasped forth piteously.  “There never—­never has been!”

He flung back the words like a missile, unerring, blindingly direct.  “No bond between us!  Good God!  Would I follow you through death if there were not?” And then suddenly, with an amazing change to tenderness that leapt the void and enchained her where she stood:—­“Toby—­Toby, you little ass—­don’t you know I’ve loved you from the moment The Night Moth struck?”

There was no questioning the truth of those words.  A great sob broke from Toby, and the tension went out of her attitude.  She stood for a few seconds with her head raised, and on her face the unutterable rapture of one who sees a vision.  Then, with sharp anguish, “I can’t come back!” she cried like a frightened child.  “I’m going to fall!”

Saltash straightened himself.  His forehead was wet, but he did not pause for a moment.  “I’m coming to you,” he said.  “Keep as you are and I’ll give you a hand to hold!”

She obeyed him as one dazed into submission.  Blindly she waited, till with a monkey-like agility, he also had traversed that giddy ledge to where she stood.  His fingers met and gripped her own.

“Now,” he said, “come with me and you are safe!  You can’t fall.  My love is holding you up.”

She heard the laugh in his voice, and her panic died.  Mutely she yielded herself to him.  By the strength of his will alone, she left the abyss behind.  But when he lifted her from the parapet back to safety, she cried out as one whom fear catches by the throat, and fainted in his arms.

* * * * *

Out of a great darkness, the light dawned again for Toby.  She opened her eyes gasping to find that the scene had changed.  She was lying upon tiger-skins in Saltash’s conical chamber, and he, the king of all her dreams, was kneeling by her side.

That was the first thing that occurred to her—­that he should kneel.

“Oh, don’t!  Oh, don’t!” she said quickly.  “I am not—­not Maud.”

He regarded her humorously, but the old derisive lines were wholly gone from his dark face.  His eyes held something that was unfamiliar, something that made her quiver with a quick agitation that was not distress.

“So I am only allowed to kneel to Maud!” he said.

She tried to meet his look and, failing, hid her face.  “I—­I know you have always loved her,” she murmured rather incoherently.  “You couldn’t—­you couldn’t—­pretend to—­to—­to really love anyone else—­after Maud!”