to be borne.
She covered her face and sobbed.

"Chris!" Her husband's voice came down to her in the depths of her
distress. His hand pressed her head. "Leave off crying," he said. "You
mustn't cry."

She turned her face upwards, all blinded with tears. "Trevor, I know--I
know we shan't be in time!"

They were not the words she wanted to say to him, but they came uppermost
and were uttered almost before she knew. She wondered if they would make
him angry, but it was too late to recall them. She reached out her hands
to him imploringly.

"Oh, forgive me for caring so much!"

"Hush!" he said again very gently. "I understand."

He put the hair back from her forehead, and dried her eyes. There was
something almost maternal in his touch.

"You mustn't cry," he said again. "I think you will be in time, and if
you are, you will need all your strength; so you mustn't waste it now.
Come, you are going to be brave?"

"I'll try," she said faintly.

"See if you can get to sleep," he said.

"But I know I can't," whispered Chris.

"I think you can." He spoke with grave conviction.

"Will you--will you hold my hand?" faltered Chris.

He took it at once. She felt his fingers close steadily upon it, and a
sense of comfort stole over her. She clasped them very tightly, and
closed her eyes.

The train drummed on through the night, bearing her back to Valpre, back
to the old enchantments, to the sands, the caves, and the rocks. She
began to hear again the long, low wash of the sea. Or was it the sound of
wheels that raced over the metals? Before her inner vision came the
spreading line of foam that had rushed how often to catch her dancing
feet. And the quiet pools crystal-clear among the rocks, with the
sunshine that turned their pebbly floors to gold, so that they became
palaces of delight, draped with exquisite curtains of rose and palest
green, peopled with scuttling crabs that were not really crabs at all,
but the spellbound retinue of the knight who dwelt in the Magic Cave.

She looked towards the Gothic archway, expectant, with quickening
breath. Surely he would be coming soon! Ah, now she saw him--a radiant,
white-clad figure, with the splendour of eternal youth upon him and the
Deathless Magic in his eyes.

And suddenly her own eyes were opened, so that she knew beyond all
doubting that the spell that bound him--that bound them both--was the
spell of Immortality, the Divine Passport--Love the Indestructible.