"How do you, in your great wisdom, interpret that kiss?""It requires no great wisdom to interpret kisses, Maskull.""Hereafter, never dare to come between us. Sullenbode belongs to me.""Then I say no more; but you are a fated man."From that time forward he spoke not another word to either of the others.
A heavy gleam appeared in the woman's eyes. "Now things are changed, Maskull. Where are you taking me?""Choose, you."
"The man I love must complete his journey. I won't have it otherwise.
You shall not stand lower than Corpang."
"Where you go, I will go."
"And I - as long as your love endures, I will accompany you even to Adage.""Do you doubt its lasting?"
"I wish not to.... Now I will tell you what I refused to tell you before. The term of your love is the term of my life. When you love me no longer, I must die.""And why?" asked Maskull slowly.
"Yes, that's the responsibility you incurred when you kissed me for the first time. I never meant to tell you.""Do you mean that if I had gone on alone, you would have died?""I have no other life but what you give me."He gazed at her mournfully, without attempting to reply, and then slowly placed his arms around her body. During this embrace he turned very pale, but Sullenbode grew as white as chalk.
A few minutes later the journey toward Adage was resumed.
They had been walking for two hours. Teargeld was higher in the sky and nearer the south. They had descended many hundred feet, and the character of the ridge began to alter for the worse. The thin snow disappeared, and gave way to moist, boggy ground. It was all little grassy hillocks and marshes. They began to slip about and become draggled with mud. Conversation ceased; Sullenbode led the way, and the men followed in her tracks. The southern half of the landscape grew grander. The greenish light of the brilliant moon, shining on the multitude of snow-green peaks, caused it to appear like a spectral world. Their nearest neighbour towered high above them on the other side of the valley, due south, some five miles distant. It was a slender, inaccessible, dizzy spire of black rock, the angles of which were too steep to retain snow. A great upward - curving horn of rock sprang out from its topmost pinnacle. For a long time it constituted their clues landmark.