Callista crouched with parted lips and desperate eyes. About them there was silence, broken only by the tiny sibilations of the fire, the hushed voice [387] of the night wind muttering in the outer chamber of the cave, as the air sighs through the open lips of a sea-shell. Her ear was against his breast; with a sort of creeping terror she heard the even beating of his heart. He could say such words quietly! An awful sense of powerlessness gripped her. Lance was arbiter of his own fate. If he chose, he could do this thing. She was like one who waits, the flood at her lips, while the inevitable death rises slowly to engulf. Then it was as if the waters closed above her. With a whispered cry she settled forward against him, and rested so, held close in his embrace. Little shivers went over her lax body. She uttered brief, broken murmurs. Down and down she sank in the arms that clasped her. Lance bent his head to hear. "Well--if ye won't go with me," she was saying, "I'll go with you. I'll go wherever they take you. What you suffer, I'll suffer, Lance; because the fault was mine--oh, the fault was mine!" "We ain't got no time to talk about faults, honey," he said to her, slipping a caressing hand beneath her cheek, lifting the bent face, kissing her again and again, offering that demonstrative love for which Callista thirsted, which she had no initiative herself to proffer. "I'll not let you miscall my girl. I wouldn't have a hair of her head different. Come on, darlin', I've got to make good my word." [388] Strangely stilled as to her grief, Callista rose. She moved silently about the cave and, without any further word of remonstrance, helped him gather his belongings together and make them ready. Lance himself was like a man for whom a new day has dawned. He was almost gay when they turned to take their farewell of the place that had been his home for weeks. When they stepped forth, they found the sun fully risen upon a morning fair and promising. Callista looked long at the rock-house as, carrying their bundles, they passed it on the way to their mounts. "And I had you for my own--all my own--and nobody to hinder--while we lived there," she said, speaking in a slow, wondering tone. "Oh, Lord! Foolish people have to learn hard when 'tis that they're blessed." Lance's free arm went around her slight body and drew her close to his side as they walked. When they reached the animals, he loaded the bedding and other things carefully upon them, then turned to her. "Sweetheart," he said, with that strange deep glow in his eyes, "folks that love each other like we do are blessed all the time, whether they're free and together--or separated--or in jail. They're blessed whether they're above ground or below it." He kissed her and lifted her lightly to Maje's back and they rode away.