------------------------------------------------------------------------ The word is breathed in a low, unsteady voice. Every drop of blood within her turns to ice. It is answered at last, her oft-repeated prayer. She is about to behold him. Does she not shrink from it? Not by a hair's-breadth. "Let me see you, my love," she murmurs softly, not daring to move lest the spell should be broken. "Where--where are you?" "Where our hearts first met--there they meet again. Look up, my sweet one. I am here." She does look up. In the red and boding glare of those ominous war-fires she sees him as she saw him that night. She springs to her feet--and a loud and thrilling cry goes forth upon the darkness. "Eustace--Eustace! Oh, my love! Spirit or flesh--you shall not leave me! At last--at last!" CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. FROM DEATH AND--TO DEATH. She realised it at length--realised that this was no visitant from the spirit-world conjured up in answer to her impassioned prayer, but her lover himself, alive and unharmed. She had thrown herself upon his breast, and clung to him with all her strength, sobbing passionately-- clung to him as if even then afraid that he might vanish as suddenly as he had appeared. "My love, my love," he murmured in that low magnetic tone which she knew so well, and which thrilled her to the heart's core. "Calm those poor nerves, my darling, and rest on the sweetness of our meeting. We met-- our hearts met first on this very spot. Now they meet once more, never again to part." Still her feeling was too strong for words; she could only cling to him in silence, while he covered her face and soft hair with kisses. A moment ago she was mourning him as dead, was burying her heart in his unknown and far-away grave, and lo, as by magic, he stood before her, and she was safe in his embrace. A moment ago life was one long vista of blank, agonising grief; now the joys of heaven itself might pale before the unutterable bliss of this meeting. Unlawful or not as their love might be, there was something solemn, almost sacred, in its intense reality. The myriad eyes of heaven looked down from the dark vault above, and the sullen redness of the war-fires flashing from the distant heights shed a dull, threatening glow upon those two, standing there locked in each other's embrace. Then once more the wild, weird war-cry of the savage hosts swelled forth upon the night. It was an awesome and fearful background to this picture of renewed life and bliss. Such a reunion can best be left to the imagination, for it will bear no detailment. "Why did you draw my very heart out of me like this, Eustace, my life?" she said at last, raising her head. "When they told me you were dead I knew it would not be long before I joined you. I could not have endured this living death much longer."