She found a match; she got some dry twigs blazing. In their light she saw him. He lay on his back like a dead man, his arms outflung, his white face turned up toward hers. There was a great smear of blood across his brow, the track of a bloody hand as it had sought to wipe a gathering dimness out of his eyes. The fire burned brighter; she saw it glisten upon a little pool of blood at her side. She knelt and bent over him, scarcely breathing. If he were dead--if, after all this, Mark King were dead----His eyes were closed; his face was deathly white, looking the more ghastly from the dark stain across it. She lifted her own hand that had touched his side and looked at it with wide frightened eyes; it, too, was red. At that moment King's face was no ghastlier than hers. For a little while she sat motionless, her brain reeling. But almost immediately her brain cleared and there stood forth as in a white light the one thought: _Mark King was about to die, and he must not die_! For he was Mark King, valiant and full of vigour and vitality, a man strong and hardy and lusty, a man who would not be beaten! He was the victor, not the vanquished. And, further, she, Gloria King, Mark King's wife, would not let him die! He was hers, her own; she would hold him back to her. Had he not come to her when she needed him, and done his uttermost for her? If now she was filled with life and the pulsating love of life, it was his doing. And now it was her task--her glorious, God-given privilege!--to do for him, to fight for him, ignoring the odds against her, to save him. She sprang up filled with stubborn, confident determination. He was hers and she would not let him die. She had learned to fight; she had fought against Gratton, against Brodie; she would fight as she had never done until now against death itself.