Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/207

Rh almost the superman. Embry breathed power and mastery; so did Steele, and in the two this expression came differently, resulted differently. Embry's was smooth running, Steele's was rugged. … From their eyes her swift look dropped to their hands and it was as though she had peeped in on their souls. The hands of Joe Embry, large and carefully groomed and capable, were those of a man who directs other men and reaps through their bodily blows struck for him; the hands of Steele were big and hard and brown, those of a man who battles with life by coming to grips with her, who draws his own water and hews his own wood. … She was looking at two modern types, that of the city man, that of the man of the vast outdoors.

Suddenly it was borne in upon the girl that something within her, deep down and weak voiced and uncertain, was crying out, demanding to see these two big bodies hurled at each other. The primal in the situation had penetrated to the primal in her, covered though it was with many generations of softening civilization. And she wanted to see Bill Steele, the man she hated, drive his great hard fist into the expressionless face of Joe Embry, the man whom she knew she was on the verge of marrying! A strange sort of giddiness was upon her, had held her staring an instant, then passed to leave her clear thoughted. But in that brief time she had felt what she had felt, desired what she had desired, yielded ever so little to the currents in the hidden depths of her. It was unreasonable, it was unbelievable, it was impossible. And yet it was not so much as unusual that that which we cry out upon as