Page:Randall Parrish - The Red Mist.djvu/419

 Rh she had cared for me, even in ordinary friendship, that feeling had changed into dislike—probably into actual hatred. I seemed to feel the change; to comprehend the growing horror with which she confronted the future. I wanted to tell her that I understood; that I sympathized; that I would never consent to stand between her and happiness. Plan after plan flashed through my mind—she should be free; she should go to her own friends, and never see me again. I would arrange to drop out of her life as suddenly as I had come into it. But the impetuous words died unuttered on my lips. Steadily we pushed on through the darkness, no word exchanged between us, slipping and sliding along the rocky trail, following Nichols down into a black valley, and then up again to a steep, narrow ridge. All about us was the night, and the silence.

Then the dawn broke, the black gloom fading into gray, the clouds of fog in the deep valley below us rising slowly until the rays of the rising sun lifted them to the mountain tops, reddening the mist into grotesque beauty, and revealing the green glades beneath. It was a wild, desolate scene, and we paused on the edge of what seemed a sheer precipice to gaze. Even Nichols stopped, and looked down, pointing to the ridge of rock along which the barely perceptible trail ran.