“Talk with me, walk with me, desert man,” she said, wistfully. “You were Taquitch for Genie. Be Eagle for me. Your eyes know the desert where my mother sleeps--where perhaps her spirit wanders. You soothe my troubled heart. Oh, I can feel _myself_ with you, for you understand.” * * * * * Thus Adam’s soul was stormed. Magdalene Virey had presaged the future. In the dark stillness of the night, sleepless, haunted, tossed by torment, it was revealed to him that Magdalene Virey had risen out of the depths on noble love for him, and through that love she had seen with mystic eyes into the future. She had projected that love into the spirit of the desert, and it had guided Adam’s wandering steps to her daughter Ruth. Was this only a wanderer’s dream as he lay on the hills? Was it only a knot in the tangled skein of his desert life? Was it inscrutable design of a power he disdained? Be what this might, the one great love of his years possessed him, fierce and resistless on its march to his defeat. It mocked his ordeal. It flaunted a banner in his face--noble love, noble passion, love of the soul, all that revered woman, wife, mother, and babe. He had found his mate. Strange how he remembered Margarita Arallanes and the wild boy’s love of a day. Poor, pale, wasteful, sinful, lustful little gleam! And he recalled the spell of Genie--that strong call of nature in the wilderness. Above both he had arisen. But Ruth Virey was _the_ woman. He could win her. The truth beat at his temples, constricted his throat. Ruth was the flower of her mother’s tragic longing to be loved. Ruth burned with that longing. And life was not to be denied. Magdalene Virey had given him this child of her agony. She trusted the fate of Ruth in his hands. She saw with superhuman eyes. A deep tenderness for Ruth pervaded Adam’s soul. Who, of all men, could love her, save her, content her as he? It was not thought of her kisses, of her embraces, that plucked at the roots of his will. Like a passing wave the thrill of such bliss went out to the might of a nobler tide. To save Ruth from the fate of her mother, from the peril of her own heart! And in the saving, a home--happiness--the tender smile of a mother--and the kiss of a child! “But I am a criminal! I am a murderer! Any day I might be hanged before her very eyes!” he whispered, with his face in the grass, his fingers digging the turf. “Still--no one would ever recognize me now.... Ah! but _he_--that human wolf Collishaw--would not he know me?... Oh, if there be God--help me in my extremity!” * * * * * Once again he met her. As he rode up the valley at sunset she came out of the oak grove.