Gods Country--And the Woman | Page 9

the
world. And I can do what other men have done, centuries ago. They
called them knights. You may call me a MAN!"
At his words she rose from where she had been sitting. She faced the
radiant walls of the forests that rolled billow upon billow in the
distance, and the sun lighted up her crown of hair in a glory. One hand
still clung to her breast. She was breathing even more quickly, and the
flush had deepened in her cheek until it was like the tender stain of the
crushed bakneesh. Philip rose and stood beside her. His shoulders were
back. He looked where she looked, and as he gazed upon the red and
gold billows of forest that melted away against the distant sky he felt a
new and glorious fire throbbing in his veins. From the forests their eyes
turned-- and met. He held out his hand. And slowly her own hand
fluttered at her breast, and was given to him.
"I am quite sure that I understand you now," he said, and his voice was
the low, steady, fighting voice of the man new-born. "I will be your
knight, as you have read of the knights of old. I will urge no reward
that is not freely given. Now--will you let me help you?"
For a moment she allowed him to hold her hand. Then she gently
withdrew it and stepped back from him.
"You must first understand before you offer yourself," she said. "I
cannot tell you what my trouble is. You will never know. And when it
is over, when you have helped me across the abyss, then will come the

greatest trial of all for you. I believe--when I tell you that last thing
which you must do--that you will regard me as a monster, and draw
back. But it is necessary. If you fight for me, it must be in the dark.
You will not know why you are doing the things I ask you to do. You
may guess, but you would not guess the truth if you lived a thousand
years. Your one reward will be the knowledge that you have fought for
a woman, and that you have saved her. Now, do you still want to help
me?'
"I can't understand," he gasped. "But--yes--I would still accept the
inevitable. I have promised you that I will do as you have dreamed that
knights of old have done. To leave you now would be" --he turned his
head with a gesture of hopelessness--"an empty world forever. I have
told you now. But you could not understand and believe unless I did. I
love you."
He spoke as quietly and with as little passion in his voice as if he were
speaking the words from a book. But their very quietness made them
convincing. She started, and the colour left her face. Then it returned,
flooding her cheeks with a feverish glow.
"In that is the danger," she said quickly. "But you have spoken the
words as I would have had you speak them. It is this danger that must
be buried--deep--deep. And you will bury it. You will urge no
questions that I do not wish to answer. You will fight for me, blindly,
knowing only that what I ask you to do is not sinful nor wrong. And in
the end--"
She hesitated. Her face had grown as tense as his own.
"And in the end," she whispered, "your greatest reward can be only the
knowledge that in living this knighthood for me you have won what I
can never give to any man. The world can hold only one such man for a
woman. For your faith must be immeasurable, your love as pure as the
withered violets out there among the rocks if you live up to the tests
ahead of you. You will think me mad when I have finished. But I am
sane. Off there, in the Snowbird Lake country, is my home. I am alone.
No other white man or woman is with me. As my knight, the one hope

of salvation that I cling to now, you will return with me to that
place--as my husband. To all but ourselves we shall be man and wife. I
will bear your name--or the one by which you must be known. And at
the very end of all, in that hour of triumph when you know that you
have borne me safely over that abyss at the brink of which I am
hovering now, you will go off into the forest, and--"
She approached him, and laid a hand on his arm. "You will not come
back," she finished, so gently that he scarcely heard her words. "You
will die--for me--for all who have known