Paula had suffered enough from doubting; none should mar her performance now. Unerringly, the processes of mind throughout the day had borne her to such an action. She would have gone to any red-lit door of the torrid city.... Vivid terrors of some dreadful crippling accident hurried her steps into running.... Pelée, a baleful changing jewel in the black North, reminded her that Charter would not have gone up to that sink of chaos, had she spoken the word yesterday. The thought of that wonderful hour brought back the brooding romance in tints almost ethereal. Higher in her heart than he had reached in any moment of the day's fluctuations, the image of Charter wounded, was upraised now and sustained, as she turned from _Rue Victor Hugo_ into the smothering climb to the terraces. All she could feel was a prayer that he might live; all the trials and conflicts and hopes of the past six months hovered afar from this, like navies crippled in the roadstead.... She must be near the _Rue Rivoli_, she thought, suddenly facing an empty cliff. It was at this moment that she heard the soft foot-falls of a little native mule, and encountered Quentin Charter.... Quickly out of the great gladness of the meeting arose the frightful possibilities from which she had just escaped. They were still too imminent to be banished from mind at once. Again Charter had saved her from the Destroyer. She would have wept, had she ventured to speak as he lifted her into the saddle. Charter was silent, too, for the time, trying to adjust and measure and proportion. Constantly she kept her eyes upon him as he walked slightly ahead, for she needed this steady assurance that he was there and well. She felt her arms where his stiffened fingers had been, as he lifted her so easily upon the mule. She wanted to reach forward and touch his helmet. They had descended almost to _Rue Victor Hugo_, when he said: "As I looked down the fiery throat of that dragon up there to-day, everything grew black and still for a minute, like a vacuum.... Will you please tell me if I came back all right, or are we 'two hurrying shapes in twilight land--in no man's land?'" His amusing appeal righted her. "I have not heard of donkey shapes in twilight-land," she answered.... And then in the new silence she tried to bring her thoughts to the point of revelation, but she needed light for that--light in which to watch his face. Moreover, revelations contained Bellingham, and she was not quite ready to speak of this. It was dreadful to be forced to think of the occultist, when her heart cried out for another moment such as that of yesterday, in which she could watch his eyes and whisper, "I am very proud to be the Skylark you treasure so...." "Do you think it kind to frighten your friends?" she asked finally. "When they told me you had gone to the craters--it seemed such a reckless thing to do----"