When,
soon, they came to its lower reaches, with White Farm before them,
they saw overhead a rainbow.
* * * * *
The day of the storm and the cave was over, but with no outward word
their inner selves had covenanted to meet again. They met in the leafy
glen. It was easy for her to find an errand to Mother Binning's, or,
even, in the long summer afternoons, to wander forth from White Farm
unquestioned. As for him, he came over the moor, avoided the cot at
the glen head, and plunged down the steep hillside below. Once they
met Jock Binning in the glen. After that they chose for their
trysting-place that green hidden arm that once she and the laird of
Glenfernie had entered.
Elspeth did not think in those days; she loved. She moved as one who
is moved; she was drawn as by the cords of the sun. The Ancient One,
the Sphinx, had her fast. The reflection of a greater thing claimed
her and taught her, held her like a bayadere in a temple court.
As for Ian, he also held that he loved. He was the Arab bound for the
well for which he thirsted, single-minded as to that, and without much
present consciousness of tarnish or sin.... But what might arise in
his mind when his thirst was quenched? Ian did not care, in these
blissful days, to think of that.
He had come on the day of the storm, the cave, and the rainbow to a
fatal place in his very long life.
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