Benicia motioned to El Doctor to lead the way into the cave, but he shook his head in emphatic negative. Then she gave Grant a strange smile, almost that of a child who awaits revelation of a mystery. He saw in deep pools of her eyes a transcendent joy made almost pain by this moment of hope achieved. She held out her hand for him to take and they entered the cave. When their eyes had become accustomed to the sudden transition from glaring sunlight into gloom a faint glimmering at the far end of the sunlight path guided them. Ankle-deep in the dust of ages they groped. The glimmer waxed stronger. Suddenly Benicia stopped with a catching of the breath. Grant stooped and lifted a heavy object from a niche of rock, bringing it into the filtered stream of radiance. It was a golden monstrance, dust coated. Faint twinkles of light glowed like firefly lamps from jewels set in the radii of a glory. A great diamond above the crystal box caught fire from the sun. As Grant hastily bent to replace the sacred vessel his hand tipped the edge of a shallow basket. From it rolled a stream of moonbeam fire out into the zone of sunshine. Liquid globules of moon-glow, round and pellucid as ice crystals, seductive as the shadowed whiteness of a woman’s throat: the green pearls of the Virgin stripped by the impiety of El Rojo from the shrine of the Four Evangelists! Benicia slowly sank to her knees, words of prayer whispered from her lips. Prayer of thankfulness and dedication of the lost treasure to the sanctity of the Church. Grant felt his presence in this solemn moment was an intrusion. He tip-toed back to the mouth of the cave and stood looking out. All the wildness and the savagery of Altar’s secret fane of the desert god lay burning and glistening with wetness in the westering sun. The waning torrent, sardonic gesture of plenty in this ultimate citadel of thirst, splashed jewels against the lancing light. Here was a world of the primordial--Creation arrested in its first hour. A hand touched his arm lightly. He turned to find Benicia standing beside him. The sun wove an aura of vivid fire about her head. Her eyes raised to his were swimming. “Now, heart of my heart,” she whispered. And all the love fire in her flamed from her lips. THE END Transcriber’s Notes: --Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). --A Table of Contents has been provided for the convenience of the reader. --Punctuation and spelling inaccuracies were silently corrected. --Archaic and variable spelling has been preserved. --Variations in hyphenation and compound words have been preserved. --The author’s em-dash and punctuation/endquote styles have been retained. End of Project Gutenberg's Dust of the Desert, by Robert Welles Ritchie