IT was three o'clock before Marion regained consciousness, crawled to her mother, and crouched in dumb convulsions in her arms.
"What can we do, my darling?" the mother asked at last.
"Die!—thank God, we have the strength left!"
"Yes, my love," was the faint answer.
"No one must ever know. We will hide quickly every trace of crime. They will think we strolled to Lover's Leap and fell over the cliff, and my name will always be sweet and clean—you understand—come, we must hurry"
With swift hands, her blue eyes shining with a strange light, the girl removed the shreds of torn clothes, bathed, and put on the dress of spotless white she wore the night Ben Cameron kissed her and called her a heroine.
The mother cleaned and swept the room, piled the torn clothes and cord in the fireplace and burned them, dressed herself as if for a walk, softly closed the doors, and hurried with her daughter along the old pathway through the moonlit woods.
At the edge of the forest she stopped and looked back tenderly at the little home shining amid the roses, caught their faint perfume and faltered:
"Let's go back a minute—I want to see his room, and kiss Henry's picture again."
"No, we are going to him now—I hear him calling us in the mists above the cliff," said the girl—"come, we must hurry. We might go mad and fail!"
Down the dim cathedral aisles of the woods, hallowed by tender memories, through which the poet lover and father had taught them to walk with reverent feet and without fear, they fled to the old meeting-place of Love.
On the brink of the precipice, the mother trembled, paused, drew back and gasped:
"Are you not afraid, my dear?"
"No; death is sweet, now," said the girl. "I fear only the pity of those we love."
"Is there no other way? We might go among strangers," pleaded the mother.
"We could not escape ourselves! The thought of life is torture. Only those who hate me could wish that I live. The grave will be soft and cool, the light of day a burning shame."
"Come back to the seat a moment—let me tell you my love again," urged the mother. "Life still is dear while I hold your hand."
As they sat in brooding anguish, floating up from the river valley came the music of a banjo in a negro cabin, mingled with vulgar shout and song and dance. A verse of the ribald senseless lay of the player echoed above the banjo's pert refrain:
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Granny, will your dog bite? No, chile, no!"
The mother shivered and drew Marion closer.
"Oh, dear! oh, dear! has it come to this—all my hopes of your beautiful life!"
The girl lifted her head and kissed the quivering lips.
"With what loving wonder we saw you grow," she sighed, "from a tottering babe on to the hour we watched the mystic light of maidenhood dawn in your blue eyes—and all to end in this hideous, leprous shame!—No!—No! I will not have it! It's only a horrible dream! God is not dead!"
The young mother sank to her knees and buried her face in Marion's lap in a hopeless paroxysm of grief.
The girl bent, kissed the curling hair and smoothed it with her soft hand.
A sparrow chirped in the tree above, a wren twittered in a bush, and down on the river's brink a mocking-bird softly waked his mate with a note of thrilling sweetness.
"The morning is coming, dearest; we must go," said Marion. "This shame I can never forget, nor will the world forget. Death is the only way."
They walked to the brink, and the mother's arms stole round the girl.
"Oh, my baby, my beautiful darling, life of my life, heart of my heart, soul of my soul!"
They stood for a moment, as if listening to the music of the falls, looking out over the valley faintly outlining itself in the dawn. The first far-away streaks of blue light on the mountain ranges, defining distance, slowly appeared. A fresh motionless day brooded over the world as the amorous stir of the spirit of morning rose from the moist earth of the fields below.
A bright star still shone in the sky, and the face of the mother gazed on it intently. Did the Woman-spirit, the burning focus of the fiercest desire to live and will, catch in this supreme moment the star's Divine speech before which all human passions sink into silence? Perhaps, for she smiled. The daughter answered with a smile; and then, hand in hand, they stepped from the cliff into the mists and on through the opal gates of Death.