help to keep me almost warm; but you will freeze. Go for help; hurry, and if you can, send it back to me.”
He thought of the long miles back to Morgantown; no human being could walk that distance against this wind; not even a strong horse could make its way through the storm. If he went on with the wind, how long would it be before he reached a house? Before him, over range after range of hills, he saw no single sign of a building. If he reached some such place it would be the same story as the trip to Morgantown; men simply could not beat a way against that wind.
Then a cold hand touched him, and he looked up to find her eyes grave and wide once more, and her lips half smiling, as if she strove to deceive him.
“There's no chance of bringing help?”
He merely stared hungrily at her, and the loveliest thing he had ever seen was the play of golden hair beside her cheek. Her smile went out. She withdrew her hand, but she repeated: “I'm not afraid. I'll simply grow numb and then fall asleep. But you go on and save yourself.”
Seeing him shake his head, she caught his hands again.
“I'll be unhappy. You'll make me so unhappy if you stay. Please go.”
He raised the small hand and pressed it to his lips.
She said: “You are crying!”
“No, no!”
“There! I see the tears shining on my hand. What is your name?”
“Pierre.”
“Pierre? I like that name. Pierre, to make me happy, will you go? Your face is all white and touched with a shadow of blue. It is the cold. Oh, won't you go?” Then she pleaded, finding him obdurate: “If you won't go for me, then go for your father.”
He raised his head with a sudden laughter, and, raising it, the wind beat into his face fiercely and the particles of snow whipped his skin.
“Dear Pierre, then for your mother?”
He bowed his head.
“Not for all the people who love you and wait for you now by some warm fire—some cozy fire, all yellow and bright?”
He took her hands and with them covered his eyes. “Listen: I have no father; I have no mother.”
“Pierre! Oh, Pierre, I'm sorry!”
“And for the rest of 'em, I've killed a man. The whole world hates me; the whole world's hunting me.”
The small hands tugged away. He dared not raise his bowed head for fear of her eyes. And then the hands came back to him and touched his face.
She was saying tremulously: “Then he deserved to be killed. There must be men like that—almost. And I— like you still, Pierre.”
“Really?”
“I almost think I like you more—because you could kill a man—and then stay here for me.”
“If you were a grown-up girl, do you know what I'd say?”
“Please tell me.”
“That I could love you.”
“Pierre—”
“Yes.”
“My name is Mary Brown.”
He repeated several times: “Mary.”
“And if I were a grown-up girl, do you know what I would answer?”
“I don't dare guess it.”
“That I could love you, Pierre, if you were a grown-up man.”
“But I am.”
“Not a really one.”
And they both broke into laughter—laughter that died out before a sound of rushing and of thunder, as a mass slid swiftly past them, snow and mud and sand and rubble. The wind fell away from them, and when Pierre looked up he saw that a great mass of tumbled rock and soil loomed above them.
The landslide had not touched them, by some miracle, but in a moment more it might shake loose again, and all that mass of ton upon ton of stone and loam would overwhelm them. The whole mass quaked and trembled, and the very hillside shuddered beneath them.
She looked up and saw the coming ruin; but her cry was for him, not herself.
“Run, Pierre—you can save yourself.”
With that terror threatening him from above, he rose and started to run down the hill. A moan of woe followed him, and he stopped and turned back, and fought his way through the wind until he was beside her once
