Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/169

Rh "No!" she said with dry throat. "No! No!"

She ran past him and down the ladder, and Dick walked the little dusky deck for very long; quiet-footed, and forgetting his pipe, while the bells clanged off the hours and shunted them over, with all their prayers and passions, into eternity.

Once he stood still and laughed; half-angry, half-relieved. "It had to come, soon or late," he said. "But if I hadn't been a fool it would have been late. It was going to be bad enough to take the man before. It will be the very devil now."

He walked on slowly.

"But I've got to take him," he said. "I've cashed in every other mortal thing at the bank of my desires, but I'm damned if I'll let my brain go too. Ducane has got to justify me. And then I've got to justify myself—with Jennifer."

Down in the little bare cabin which she shared with Mrs. Carter, Jennifer lay headlong on the sweet-grass mattress, gripping the pillow close over her eyes. She was terrified to the quick by the fierce life of the knowledge which had broken on her, and with stiff lips and dizzy brain she tried to pray herself back into the old ignorance. But always the merciless What Is scattered her will and denied her help.

"God!" she cried. "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

And then she shivered, pressing the pillow with shaking hands against her eyes.

Once, long, long ago, in those days when Ducane meant Heaven to her, Tempest had called her a civilizing influence. She felt a smile twitch her lips mirthfully. A civilizing influence! She! She who knew the uncivilized elements of primal nature which are beyond all traditions, all help, all law. She who loved where she would have given her right arm not to have loved, and could not love where all her prayers and duty lay. She who had touched suddenly to the heart of those huge forces which sway the immortal soul, and who had to face them, giddy and alone, with all outward interpretation driven back from eyes and tongue. For a brief while Jennifer was a raw soul struggling with eternal problems back of the crusted beams of