Page:Karl Gjellerup - The Pilgrim Kamanita - 1911.djvu/196

 rides on a black ox beside the wagon; and it is the same look as erstwhile, even if out of blue eyes. The glance sets the heart of the youth on fire—he swings his battle-axe, and with loud cry joins the other warriors who rush to meet the foe—sets it on fire, and still warms it when it is pierced by the cold iron of a Scythian dart.

But they saw greater changes yet; led by the fragrant odour of the Coral Tree, they undertook even longer journeys.

They found themselves as stag and hind in the vast forest. Their love was wordless now, but not sightless. And again it was the same look; deep in the darkest depths of their great presageful eyes there lightened, even if through dim blue mists, the same spark that had later found its way so radiantly from human eye to human eye.

They grazed together; waded side by side in the clear, cool forest brook; body by body rested in the tall soft grass. They had their joys in common; together trembled for fear, when a branch suddenly became alive and the jaws of the python opened wide, or when, in the stillness of the night, a scarcely audible, creeping movement was caught by their quick cars, while their distended nostrils winded the pungent odour of a beast of prey, and they fled thence, with mighty bounds, just as a rustling and cracking made itself heard in the neighbouring thicket, and the angry roar of a tiger that had fallen short of its prey rolled through the wood, now suddenly waking to life all around.

For many years they had thus together shared all the delights and dangers of the forest, when in a lovely bit of shade one day they proceeded to gnaw the