In the face of these furnace winds, tenacity of life had new meaning for Adam. The struggle to breathe was the struggle of a dying man to live. But Adam found that he could survive. It took labor, greater even than toiling through a sandstorm, or across a sun-scorched waste to a distant water hole. And it was involuntary labor. His great lungs were not a bellows for him to open when he chose. They were compelled to work. But the process, in addition to the burn and sting, the incessant thirst, the dust-laden air, the hot skullbone like an iron lid that must fly off, and the strange, dim, red starlight, the somber red varying shadow, the weird rush and roar and lull--all these created heroic fortitude if a man was to endure. Adam understood why no human being could long exist in Death Valley. “She will not live through the night,” muttered Adam. “But if she does, I think I’ll take her away.” While in the unearthly starlit gloom, so dimly red, Adam slowly plodded across to the Virey camp, that idea grew in his mind. It had augmented before this hour, only to faint at the strength of her spirit, but to-night was different. It marked a climax. If Magdalene Virey showed any weakening, any change of spirit, Adam knew he would have reached the end of his endurance. She would be lying or sitting on the stone bench. It was not possible to breathe inside the shack. Terrible as were the furnace winds, they had to be breasted--they had to be fought for the very air of life. She had not the strength to walk up and down, to and fro, through those endless hours. Adam’s keen eyes, peering through the red-tinged obscurity, made out the dark shape of Virey staggering along back and forth like an old man driven and bewildered, hounded by the death he feared. The sight gave Adam a moment of fierce satisfaction. Strong as was the influence of Magdalene Virey, it could not keep down hate for this selfish and fallen man. Selfish beyond all other frailty of human nature! The narrow mind obsessed with self--the I and me and mine--the miserable littleness that could not forgive, that could not understand! Adam had pity even in his hate. He found the woman on the bench, lying prone, a white, limp, fragile shape, motionless as stone. Sitting down, he bent over to look into her face. Her unfathomable eyes, wide and dark and strained, stirred his heart as never before. They were eyes to which sleep was a stranger--haunted eyes, like the strange midnight at which they gazed out, supernaturally bright, mirroring the dim stars, beautiful as the waking dreams never to come true--eyes of melancholy, of unutterable passion, of deathless spirit. They were the eyes of woman and of love. Adam took her wasted hand and held it while waiting for the wind to lull so that she could hear him speak. At length the hot blast moved on, like the receding of a fire. “Magdalene, I can’t stand this any longer,” he said. “You mean--these winds--of hell?” she panted, in a whisper.