“It has been a long fight,” she sighed, in a voice that he could scarcely hear.  “I didn’t know how tired I was.”

Phillips groped for words, but he could find nothing to say, his ordered thoughts having fled before this sudden gust of ardor as leaves are whirled away before a tempest.  All he knew was that in his arms lay a woman he had knelt to, a worshipful goddess of snow and gold before whom he had abased himself, but who had turned to flesh at his first touch.

He kissed her again and again, warmly, tenderly, and yet with a ruthless fervor that grew after each caress, and she submitted passively, the while those tears stole down her cheeks.  In reality she was neither passive nor passionless, for her body quivered and Phillips knew that his touch had set her afire; but rather she seemed to be exhausted and at the same time enthralled as by some dream from which she was loath to rouse herself.

After a while her hand rose to his face and stroked it softly, then she drew herself away from him and with a wan smile upon her lips said: 

“The wind has made a fool of me.”

“No, no!” he cried, forcefully.  “You asked me what I think of you--Well, now you know.”

Still smiling, she shook her head slowly, then she told him, “Come!  I hear the rain.”

“But I want to talk to you.  I have so much to say—­”

“What is there to talk about to-night?  Hark!” They could feel, rather than hear, the first warnings of the coming downpour, so hand in hand they walked up the gravelly beach and into the fringe of the forest where glowed the dull illumination from lamplit canvas walls.  When they paused before the Countess’ tent Pierce once more enfolded her in his arms and sheltered her from the boisterous breath of the night.  His emotions were in a similar tumult, but as yet he could not voice them, he could merely stammer: 

“You have never told me your name.”

“Hilda.”

“May I—­call you that?”

She nodded.  “Yes—­when we are alone.  Hilda Halberg, that was my name.”

“Hilda!  Hilda—­Phillips.”  Pierce tried the sound curiously.  The Countess drew back abruptly, with a shiver; then, in answer to his quick concern, said: 

“I—­I think I’m cold.”

He undertook to clasp her closer, but she held him off, murmuring: 

“Let it be Hilda Halberg for to-night.  Let’s not think of—­Let’s not think at all.  Hilda—­bride of the storm.  There’s a tempest in my blood, and who can think with a tempest raging?”

She raised her face and kissed him upon the lips, then, disengaging herself once more from his hungry arms, she stepped inside her shelter.  The last he saw of her was her luminous smile framed against the black background; then she let the tent-fly fall.

As Phillips turned away big raindrops began to drum upon the near-by tent roofs, the spruce-tops overhead bent low, limbs threshed as the gusty night wind beat upon them.  But he heard none of it, felt none of it, for in his ears rang the music of the spheres and on his face lingered the warmth of a woman’s lips, the first love kiss that he had ever known.