over the echoing floor of the world.
There came other fires, such blazes and explosions of pale balls of
electricity as I had never dreamed might be, with these detonations of
pent-up elemental wrath such as I never conceived might have existence
under any sky. Night, death, storm, the strength of the elements, all
the primeval factors of the world and life were upon us, testing us,
seeking to destroy us, beating upon us, freezing, choking, blinding us,
leaving us scarce animate.

Yet not destroying us. Still, somewhere under the huddle and draggle of
it all burned on the human soul. The steel in my belt was cold, but it
had held its fire. The ice in the flints about us held fire also in its
depths. Fire was in our bodies, the fire of life--indomitable,
yearning--in our two bodies. So that which made the storm test us and
try us and seek to slay us, must perhaps have smiled grimly as it howled
on and at length disappeared, baffled by the final success of the
immutable and imperishable scheme. The fire in our two bodies still was
there.

As the rain lessened, and the cold increased, I knew that rigors would
soon come upon us. "We must walk," I said. "You shiver, you freeze."

"You tremble," she said. "You are cold. You are very cold."

"Walk, or we die," I gasped; and so I led her at last lower down the
side of the ravine, where the wind was not so strong.

"We must run," I said, "or we shall die." I staggered as I ran. With all
my soul I challenged my weakness, summoning to my aid that reserve of
strength I had always known each hour in my life. Strangely I felt--how
I cannot explain--that she must be saved, that she was I. Strange
phrases ran through my brain. I remembered only one, "Cleaving only
unto her"; and this, in my weakened frame of body and mind, I could not
separate from my stern prayer to my own strength, once so ready, now so
strangely departed from me.

We ran as we might, back and forward on the slippery mud, scrambled up
and down, panting, until at length our hearts began to beat more
quickly, and the love of life came back strongly, and the unknown,
mysterious fire deep down somewhere, inscrutable, elemental, began to
flicker up once more, and we were saved--saved, we two savages, we two
primitive human beings, the only ones left alive after the deluge which
had flooded all the earth--left alive to begin the world all over again.

CHAPTER XXVI

IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

To the delir