“No. I mean your suffering. I might have stood your spiritual ordeal. Your remorse--your agony of loss of the daughter Ruth--your brave spirit defying Virey’s hate.... But I can’t stand your physical torment. You’re wasting away. You’re withering--burning up. This hand is hot as fire--and dry as a leaf. You must drink more water.... Magdalene, lift your head.” “I--cannot,” she whispered, with wan smile. “No--strength left.” Adam lifted her head and gave her water to drink. Then as he laid her back another blast of wind came roaring through the strange opaque night. How it moaned and wailed around the huge bowlders and through the brush! It was a dance of wind fiends, hounding the lost spirits of this valley of horrors. Adam felt the slow, tight tide of his blood called stingingly to his skin and his extremities, and there it burned. It was not only his heart and his lungs that were oppressed, but the very life of his body seemed to be pressing to escape through the pores of his skin--pressed from inward by the terrible struggle to survive and pressed back from outside by the tremendous blast of wind! The wind roared by and lulled to a moan. The wave of invisible fire passed on. Out there in the dim starlight Virey staggered back and forth under the too great burden of his fate. He made no sound. He was a specter. Beyond the gray level of gloom with its strange shadows rose the immense slope of loose stones, all shining with dim, pale-red glow, all seemingly alive, waiting for the slide of the avalanche. And on the instant a rock cracked with faint ring, rolled with little hollow reports, mockingly, full of terrible and latent power. It had ominous answer in a slight jar of the earth under Adam’s feet, perhaps an earthquake settling of the crust, and then the whole vast slope moved with a low, grating sound, neither roar nor crash, nor rattle. The avalanche had slipped a foot. Adam could have pealed out a cry of dread for this woman. What a ghastly fantasy the struggle for life in Death Valley! What mockery of wind and desert and avalanche! “Wansfell--listen,” whispered the woman. “Do you hear--it passing on?” “Yes,” replied Adam, bending lower to see her eyes. Did she mean that the roar of wind was dying away? “The stormy blast of hell--with restless fury--drives the spirits onward!” she said, her voice rising. “I know--I understand. But you mustn’t speak such thoughts. You must not give up to the wandering of your mind. You must fight,” implored Adam. “My friend--the fight is over--the victory is mine.... I shall escape Virey. He possessed my body--poor weak thing of flesh!... but he wanted my love--my soul.... My soul to kill! He’ll never have either.... Wansfell, I’ll not live--through the night.... I am dying now.”