While there should be breath in her, she would go on to the
end.
There were eight hours' hard riding before her, at the swiftest pace
her horse could make; and she was already worn by the leagues already
traversed. Although this was nothing new that she did now, yet as time
flew on and she flew with it, ceaselessly, through the dim, solitary,
barren moonlit land, her brain now and then grew giddy, her heart now
and then stood still with a sudden numbing faintness. She shook the
weakness off her with the resolute scorn for it of her nature, and
succeeded in its banishment. They had put in her hand, as she had passed
through the fortress gates, a lance with a lantern muffled in Arab
fashion, so that the light was unseen from before, while it streamed
over herself, to enable her to guide her way if the moon should be
veiled by clouds. With that single, starry gleam aslant on a level with
her eyes, she rode through the ghastly twilight of the half-lit plains;
now flooded with luster as the moon emerged, now engulfed in darkness as
the stormy western winds drove the cirrhi over it. But neither darkness
nor light differed to her; she noted neither; she was like one drunk
with strong wine, and she had but one dread--that the power of her horse
would give way under the unnatural strain made on it, and that she
would reach too late, when the life she went to save would have fallen
forever, silent unto death, as she had seen the life of Marquise fall.
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