He had come up the steepest and shortest side of the ridge, and
when he reached the top he lay upon his face for a moment, his
breath almost gone.
The fire was built against a huge dead pine, and the pine was
blazing a hundred feet in the air. He could feel its heat. The
monster torch illumined the barren cap of the rock from edge to
edge, and he looked about him for Jeanne. For a moment he did not
see her, and her name rose to his lips, to be stilled in the same
breath by what he saw beyond the burning pine. Through the blaze
of the heat and fire fie beheld Jeanne, standing close to the edge
of the mountain, gazing into the south and west. He called her
name. Jeanne turned toward him with a startled cry, and Philip was
at her side. The girl's face was white and strained. Her lips were
twisted in pain at sight of him. She spoke no word, but a strange
sound rose in her throat, a welling-up of the sudden despair which
the fire-light revealed in her eyes. For one moment they stood
apart, and Philip tried to speak. And then, suddenly, he reached
out and drew her quickly into his arms--so quickly that there was
no time for her to escape, so closely that her sweet face lay
imprisoned upon his breast, as he had held it once before, under
the picture at Fort o' God.
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