, human, alive. She held his
face between her hands, looking straight back for a space. Then
with a little quivering laugh, she bent lower and kissed him.

"I think you're right, partner," she said. "We don't need to
go--any farther than this. We've--got there."

He caught her to him with a mastery that was dearer to her in that
moment than any tenderness, swaying her to his will. "Yes--we've
got there!" he said, and kissed her again with lips that trembled
even while they compelled. "But oh, my soul--what a journey!"

She clung to him more closely, giving of her all in full and sweet
surrender. "And oh, my soul," she laughed back softly--"what an
arrival!"

And at that they laughed together, triumphant as those who have the
world at their feet.

CHAPTER XIII

BY FAITH AND LOVE

The flood went down in the morning, and behind it there sprang into
being a new world of softest, tenderest green in place of the
brown, parched desert that had been. Mary Ann stood at the door of
her hut and looked at it with her goggle-eyes in which the fright
of the storm was still very apparent.

Neither she nor her satellites would go near the house of the
_baas_ that morning, for a dread shadow lay upon it into which they
dared not venture. The _baas_ himself was there. He had driven
her into the cooking-hut a little earlier and compelled her to
prepare a hot meal under his stern supervision. But even the
_baas_ could not have forced her to enter the bungalow. For by
some occult means Mary Ann knew that Death was waiting there, and
the wrath of the gods was so recent that she had not courage left
for this new disaster.

Diamond had brought his burden safely out of the storm, and was now
comfortably sheltered in his own stable. But the man who had
ridden him had been found hours later by the big _baas_ face
downwards on the _stoep_, and now he lay in the room in which he
had lain for so long, with breathing that waxed and waned and
sometimes stopped, and eyes that wandered vaguely round as though
seeking something which they might never find.

What were they looking for? Sylvia longed to know. In the hush of
that room with the light of the early morning breaking through, it
seemed to her that those eyes were mutely waiting for a message
from Beyond. They did not know her even when they rested upon her
face.

She herself was worn out both physically and mentally, but she
would not leave him. And so Bur