Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/287

 is some one I can trust who will give us a horse and buggy, and we can drive to Claxton and get a train. Oh, Varge, Varge, did you think that I would let you go alone! That I—"

She was crushed in his arms, his lips to hers, to her hair, to her eyes again—and again in his soul burst forth that deathless song of glad, wondrous joy, and now its melody was carried in high, exultant notes, like crashing strains of martial music that fired his blood—and he was immortal, a god, and power and majesty and might and heaven and earth were his.

"Yes!" he whispered fiercely. "Yes, yes—yes!"

She freed herself, half-laughing, half-crying, the blue eyes smiling at him through a blinding mist; then breathlessly, pantingly, she pushed him away.

"Go, then!" she pleaded. "Oh, go at once—quick! I will be there before you are—and we have no time to lose."

She turned from him and ran toward the house. For a moment the little white figure paused on the veranda steps and looked back at him—and then she was gone.

The song in his soul rose into higher, wilder, almost barbaric chords—the primal, elemental song that may slumber sometimes but never dies. Quickly he passed across the lawn, down the driveway, over the road and gained the fields. Bathed in the white, clear moonlight, fairy carpeted they seemed, giving a new lightness, a new spring to his steps, as though they too heard the song and would speed him on his way.

But presently his steps grew slower, faltered, and he stopped—and presently the moonlight seemed to hover