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Down past the shoulders flooded a mass of blue-black hair. The firelight flickered and danced across the silken shimmer of it. It swept wildly past the waist, a glorious, night-dark tide in which the heart of a strong man could be tangled and lost. With quivering lips Jacqueline cried: "Look at me! Am I worthy of him?"
Then the valleys began to open out of the chasm of night-dark canyons wrought in the wilderness of the mountain sides. Here and there, oases left by the devastating hand of time, rose high plateaus, tree-crowned and verdant. And then, higher up among the white peaks, sentinel-like, stood giant tables whose brown tops and precipitous sides told of inaccessible and arid wastes.
The red flame from the torch was clearly reflected in the night-dark lake; and the brilliant light must have lured the fish, for round about the flame in the deep a mass of dark specks were seen, that moved continually, and changed places. There were two old men in the scow.
She had always before been afraid of the night-dark and imagined creepy steps coming along the hall and into the door. The things she imagined now were dreadfuler than that. This new dark was so much darker! They thought she was asleep and let her lie there on her little bed alone. By-and-by would be time enough to probe gently for the childish trouble.
He had been watching her face in silence for a little while, noticing that it looked very small and pale to-day in its frame of night-dark hair, and that there were faint, purplish shadows beneath her eyes. "You look awfully tired!" he remarked with concern. "And sad," he added. "Is anything bothering you?"
He had the qualities which fitted him for that life, the "taking arts" and accomplishments; he was a fine linguist; he had a wonderfully well-stored memory, great self-confidence, self-respect, and assurance; his manners were easy, and he had all social graces and refinements; his face was singularly handsome, and remarkable through its pallor, the depth of its black eyes, and delicacy of its chiselled features framed in night-dark curls; he was a master of the art of self-defence, a hard and fine rider, and he was equipped with wit, sarcasm, poetical perception, keen reason, unbounded ambition, and undaunted courage.
He heard her breath catch, and as if some impalpable and joyous spirit rushed to meet and mingle with his, something from her, a spirit as warm as the fire, as faintly, keenly sweet as an air from a night-dark, unseen garden blowing in his face. "The other reason is you, Sally Fortune. You can't go with me as far as I must go; and I can't leave you behind." Ah, there it was!
I spoke no word in answer, for my heart was very heavy, and now that all was done I was weary. Together, then, we lifted up the body and laid it on the golden bed. Charmion placed the uræus crown upon the ivory brow, and combed the night-dark hair that showed never a thread of silver, and, for the last time, shut those eyes wherein had shone all the changing glories of the sea.
The girl stooped and slipped an arm under the man's shoulders. The masses of her night-dark hair fell brushing his face in a fragrant cascade and her deep eyes were wide, unmasking to his gaze all the candid fears and intensities of her love.
The splendid slenderness of her figure was enhanced by the veiling of delicate negligée, and the face under its night-dark profusion of hair looked out wistfully with a sad half-smile on something that her heart chose to hold before her gaze.
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