John Armstrong, went to the hut, choked the Indian guard and carried
away Mlle. Giraud. With her was also conveyed a number of pounds of
gold dust she had collected during her six months' forced engagement
in Tacuzama. The Carabobo Indians are easily the most enthusiastic
lovers of music between the equator and the French Opera House in New
Orleans. They are also strong believers that the advice of Emerson
was good when he said: "The thing thou wantest, O discontented man
--take it, and pay the price." A number of them had attended the
performance of the Alcazar Opera Company in Macuto, and found Mlle.
Giraud's style and technique satisfactory. They wanted her, so they
took her one evening suddenly and without any fuss. They treated her
with much consideration, exacting only one song recital each day. She
was quite pleased at being rescued by Mr. Armstrong. So much for
mystery and adventure. Now to resume the theory of the protoplasm.

John Armstrong and Mlle. Giraud rode among the Andean peaks, enveloped
in their greatness and sublimity. The mightiest cousins, furthest
removed, in nature's great family become conscious of the tie. Among
those huge piles of primordial upheaval, amid those gigantic silences
and elongated fields of distance the littlenesses of men are
precipitated as one chemical throws down a sediment from another.
They moved reverently, as in a temple. Their souls were uplifted in
unison with the stately heights. They travelled in a zone of majesty
and peace.

To Armstrong the woman seemed almost a holy thing. Yet bathed in the
white, still dignity of her martyrdom that purified her earthly beauty
and gave out, it seemed, an aura of transcendent loveliness, in those
first hours of companionship she drew from him an adoration that was
half human love, half the worship of a descended goddess.