Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/185

Rh and her beauty struck him like the moon when it drops suddenly through a mist of clouds.

"And yours, Pierre?"

"Not here."

"Why?"

"Because there are people. Hurry. Now here, with just the trees around us"

And he tore off the mask.

The white, cold moon shone over them, slipping down between the dark tops of the trees, and the wind stirred slowly through the branches with a faint, hushing sound, as if once more a warning were coming to Pierre this night. He looked up, his left hand at the cross.

"Look down. You are afraid of something, Pierre. What is it?"

"With your arms around my neck, there's nothing in the world I fear. Mary, I loved you all this time."

"Pierre—and I"

"But you have grown so tall—so strange—I can hardly feel"

"And you—so stern and old."

"I never dreamed I could love anything more than the little girl who lay in the snow, and died there that night."

"And I never dreamed I could smile at any man except the boy who lay by me that night. And he died."

"What miracle saved you?"

She said: "It was wonderful, and yet very simple. You remember how the tree crushed me down into