The wind assailed Kate violently, and she caught at a spur of rock and clung, while her traveling-veil, escaped from bounds, flung out like a "home-going" pennant of a ship. "A flag of truce, Kate?" thundered Wander's voice. "Will you receive it?" cried Kate. Now that she had sought and found him, she would not surrender without one glad glory of the hour. "Name your conditions, beloved enemy." "How can we talk like this?" "We're not talking. We're shouting." "Is there no way across?" "Only for eagles." "What did you mean by staying up here? I was terrified. What if you had been dying alone--" "I came up to think things out." "Have you?" "Yes." "Well?" "Kate, we must be married." "Yes," laughed Kate. "I know it." "But--" "Yes," called Kate, "that's it. But--" "But you shall do your work: I shall do mine." "I know," said Kate. "That's what I meant to¸ say to you. There's more than one way of being happy and good." "Go your way, Kate. Go to your great undertaking. Go as my wife. I stay with my task. It may carry me farther and bring me more honor than we yet know. I shall go to you when I can: you must come to me--when you will. What more exhilarating? A few years will bring changes. I hear they may send me to Washington, after all. But they'll not need to send me. Lead where you will, I will follow--on condition!" "The condition?" She stood laughing at him, shining at him, free and proud as the "victory" of a sculptor's dream. "That you follow my leadership in turn. We'll have a Republic of Souls, Kate, with equal opportunity--none less, none greater--with high expediency for the watchword." "Yes. Oh, Karl, I came to say all this!" "Then some day we'll settle down beneath one roof--we'll have a hearthstone." "Yes," cried Kate again, this time with an accent that drowned forever the memory of her "no." "Turn about, Kate; turn about and go down the trail. You'll have to do it alone, I'm afraid. I can't get over there to help." "I don't need help," retorted Kate. "It's fine doing it alone." "Follow your path, and I will follow mine. We can keep in sight almost all the way, I think, and,¸ as you know, a little below this height, the paths converge." Kate stood a moment longer, looking at him, measuring him. "How splendid to be a man," she called. "But I'm glad I'm a woman," she supplemented hastily. "Not half so glad as I, Kate, my mate,--not a thousandth part so glad as I." She held out her arms to him. He gave a great laugh and plunged down the path. Kate swept her glance once more over the dark beauty of the mountain-tops--her splendid world, wrought with illimitable joy in achievement by the Maker of Worlds,--and turning, ran down the great rock that led to the trail. THE END End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Precipice, by Elia Wilkinson Peattie