"
"I'll tell you before you go. I can't now. I don't know how I
shall then. But it must be told. I'd never let you leave me
without knowing. For in spite of what you say there's a chance
you mightn't come back."
Day after day the west wind blew across the valley. Day after day
the clouds clustered gray and purple and black. The cliffs sang
and the caves rang with Oldring's knell, and the lightning
flashed, the thunder rolled, the echoes crashed and crashed, and
the rains flooded the valley. Wild flowers sprang up everywhere,
swaying with the lengthening grass on the terraces, smiling wanly
from shady nooks, peeping wondrously from year-dry crevices of
the walls. The valley bloomed into a paradise. Every single
moment, from the breaking of the gold bar through the bridge at
dawn on to the reddening of rays over the western wall, was one
of colorful change. The valley swam in thick, transparent haze,
golden at dawn, warm and white at noon, purple in the twilight.
At the end of every storm a rainbow curved down into the
leaf-bright forest to shine and fade and leave lingeringly some
faint essence of its rosy iris in the air.
Venters walked with Bess, once more in a dream, and watched the
lights change on the walls, and faced the wind from out of the
west.
Always it brought softly to him strange, sweet tidings of far-off
things. It blew from a place that was old and whispered of youth.
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