A NEW impulse drew them now more closely together. Side by side, pressed
closely to each other, they travelled swiftly toward Sho Kon Sha. They
dared not wait to eat, to sleep, to rest but a moment, and the night
found them still moving onward.
They spoke scarcely at all to each other; but she rested like a child in
the curve of his arm, her head against his breast. Once she sighed, ever
so faintly—a little breath of weariness that escaped her almost
unconsciously.
Instantly he stopped, lifted her face in his hands, and, in the dark
woods, anxiously examined it.
“You are crying, Tama.”
“No-o,” she said.
“But your face is wet.”
“It is the dew upon my face,” she said.
Again they moved onward. About them towered the giant trees, silhouetted
against the starlit skies. Sometimes as the ascent became more steep,
they clung to outjutting shrubs and bushes, and once when he fancied her
footsteps slightly dragged, he lifted her bodily in his arms and carried
her for a space. But she begged to be permitted to walk. There was still
a great distance to go. He must not be hampered by her burden. She
wished to help—not hinder him.
The night grew more still, and a penetrating chill descended about them.
He drew off his coat, to put about her; but she showed him where she had
strapped to her back, with the string of her obi, the quilt. He had
thought it part of her sash, and was all compunction that he had
permitted her to carry even so slight a load. She laughed in her little
tremulous way, and challenged him to untie the knot. In the dark his
big, clumsy fingers picked at it in vain. Again she laughed,
caressingly, with a teasing tenderness, and she drew the little bundle
round in front. It fell at her feet in a soft, silken heap.
He was for wrapping it several times around her; but she insisted she
would not proceed even the fraction of a step unless he shared the quilt
with her. And so, his arm again about her, under the down-padded temple
quilt, they moved along in the chilly darkness, defying with the new
warmth of their hearts and bodies the cold of the autumn night.
Thus all night long they travelled, their feet moving mechanically, but
never unwillingly, pausing not at all to look backward over the paths
they had followed, but pressing steadily onward toward their goal. And
the first pale streak of dawn found them climbing up the last height,
within the very sight of Sho Kon Sha.
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