Page:The Cross Pull.pdf/169

 it, craved its full expression as she had craved the taste of each delicious berry—a thousand times more insistently than that—and knew that it could never be fulfilled.

They spoke but little. Dusk settled down around them. A soft violet haze drifted across the hills, shaded to purple, and the deeper valleys swam in obscurity below them while the sun still glinted brilliantly from the snow caps of far off divides. The girl’s heart was touched with the shadows while Moran’s was alight with the sparkling reflection from the peaks. At last all was night except one gleaming spot, the blaze of snow on the most lofty point in the Sunlight Peaks.

Then Moran turned and held her close in his arms. She stayed there, clung to him for a long minute. As the last light faded from the distant point she drew away.

“Maybe it was wrong,” she said. “But I’m only human. Right or wrong—I had to have my one minute with you. Besides, I wanted you to know. You would rather know it that way—once; even though we can’t go on with it. I’ve made one big, unutterable mistake, the worst a girl can make.” Moran attempted to speak, but she shook her head.