Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/99

Rh ruminant of the herd already marked for slaughter by the butcher's appraising eye.

"But you're pale," said Uhlan with all the vox tremolo stops pulled out. And she was able to wonder how often he had fluttered the dove-cotes of feminine emotion with those intimately lowered yet vibrant chest-tones of his. Her mind leapt to the conclusion, even before he placed one hand on her shoulder, that he was serenely sure of himself. Yet his sheer effrontery, his immeasurable vanity, tended to stabilize her when she stood most in need of such adjustment. She shook the appropriating hand from her blouse-shoulder and fell back a few steps, eying him intently. For she was swept by a sudden and belated impulse to save him from himself, to warn him off from the dead-fall into which he was so stupidly blundering.

"There's just one thing I want to say to you, that I must say to you," she told him, still in the grip of that forlorn impulse to escape from it all while escape was yet possible. But he advanced confidently, step by step, as she retreated.