|17|The hour came when Magdalene Virey stirred Adam to his depths.
“Wansfell,” she said, with a rare and wonderful tremor in her voice, “I love the silence, the loneliness, the serenity—even the tragedy of this valley of shadows. Ah! It is one place that will never be popular with men—where few women will ever come. Nature has set it apart for wanderers of the wastelands, men like you, unquenchable souls who endure, as you said, to fight, to strive, to seek, to find.... And surely for lost souls like me! Most men and all women must find death here, if they stay. But there is death in life. I’ve faced my soul here, in the black, lonely watches of the desert nights. And I would endure any agony to change that soul, to make it as high and clear and noble as the white cone of the mountain yon
