Page:The Great Secret.djvu/185

Rh "Will you be content with such a savage existence?" inquired Anatole, with a half doubt in his tone.

"Thoroughly. Do you think the doctor is a fool, my own love!"

"No; but why that question!"

"Because he permitted us to go without giving me any private instructions concerning you."

"Well, what of that?"

"He suspects me, as well as you, of disaffection to the Cause, and has now given us both our last chance of escape. When he returns to Europe, we will be marked with the fatal cross. There is not a city or centre of civilisation in the world where we can be safe after that, only a wilderness such as this is, or in some tropic island where commerce with the outer world is unknown. Here, my love, we are safe and at liberty to live and die as we like best, and for that I shall ever adore this bleak and lonely land."

"We must get away from it, however, somehow, Eugene, for I doubt if we could live through its winter."

"Never mind the winter; summer is coming to us, and sufficient for my day is the good thereof," she answered merrily, striding alongside of him like a good comrade, and ignoring the burden on her shoulders as if it had been nothing.

They followed the course of the fjord for many miles, as it was fringed with high cliffs, watching it gradually become narrower as it approached the mountains, and when night fell upon them, they found themselves at the entrance of a steep gorge, down which a tumultuous and roaring torrent rushed. Here, selecting a spot sheltered from the wind between some high boulders, they made their camp, fairly satisfied with their day's