In darkness he opened the door.  Rain and wind swept in.  With his free hand he groped out, found Marette, drew her after him, and closed the door again.  Entering from the lighted hall into the storm was like being swallowed in a pit of blackness.  It engulfed and smothered them.  Then came suddenly a flash of lightning, and he saw Marette’s face, white and drenched, but looking at him with that same strange glow in her eyes.  It thrilled him.  Even in the darkness it was there.  It had been there since he had returned to her from Kedsty and had knelt at her bedside, with his arms about her for a moment.

Only now, in the beat of the storm, did an answer to the miracle of it come to him.  It was because of him.  It was because of his faith in her.  Even death and horror could not keep it from her eyes.  He wanted to cry out the joy of his discovery, to give wild voice to it in the teeth of the wind and the rain.  He felt sweeping through him a force mightier than that of the night.  Her hands were on his arm, as if she was afraid of losing him in that pit of blackness; the soft cling of them was like a contact through which came a warm thrill of electrical life.  He put out his arm and drew her to him, so that for a moment his face pressed against the top of her wet little turban.

And then he heard her say:  “There is a scow at the bayou, Jeems.  It is close to the end of the path.  M’sieu Fingers has kept it there, waiting, ready.”

He had been thinking of Crossen’s place and an open boat.  He blessed Fingers again, as he took Marette’s hand in his own and started for the trail that led through the poplar thicket.

Their feet slopped deep in wet and mud, and with the rain there was a wind that took their breath away.  It was impossible to see a tree an arm’s length away, and Kent hoped that the lightning would come frequently enough to guide him.  In the first flare of it he looked down the slope that led riverward.  Little rivulets of water were running down it.  Rocks and stumps were in their way, and underfoot it was slippery.  Marette’s fingers were clinging to his again, as she had held to them on the wild race up to Kedsty’s bungalow from the barracks.  He had tingled then in the sheer joy of their thrill, but it was a different thrill that stirred him now—­an overwhelming emotion of possessorship.  This night, with its storm and its blackness, was the most wonderful of all his nights.

He sensed nothing of its discomfort.  It could not beat back the joyous racing of the blood in his body.  Sun and stars, day and night, sunshine and cloud, were trivial and inconsequential to him now.  For close to him, struggling with him, fighting through the night with him, trusting him, helpless without him, was the living, breathing thing he loved more than he loved his own life.  For many years, without knowing it, he had waited for this night, and now that it was upon him, it inundated and swept away his old life.  He was no longer the huntsman, but the hunted.  He was no longer alone, but had a priceless thing to fight for, a priceless and helpless thing that was clinging to his fingers in the darkness.  He did not feel like a fugitive, but as one who has come into a great triumph.  He sensed no uncertainty or doubt.