Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/187

 She felt very queer. But she was thinking quite clearly, at that.

But she was determined to see him. She had no intention of communicating with him. What was the use? She would see him once more, and then she would go away and live her life as it was pre-determined. Perhaps he had forgotten her anyhow. All those pretty girls, riding high-school thoroughbreds in the parade—perhaps he was in love with one of them. He was vain as well as proud. The very way he had made his horse rear in the street, that was vanity.

But she would see him once more.

She called up the house and made some excuse or other, and later she took a taxicab and went out to the show grounds. Her head was throbbing and her hands icy cold. By the time the performance began the grand-stand was crowded, but she saw nothing of the crowd, and but little of what went on in the arena. All she saw was Tom McNair, winning the plaudits of the vast audience by his recklessness and accepting them with a mocking smile. If he suspected her presence there he gave no indication of it; he swept the reserved seats with a casual glance now and then, but that was all.

He had come into his own. In that dusty enclosure he was a king, and these people assembled to do him homage.

She had no idea that he was being unusually reckless that afternoon, or that Arizona was bursting with rage under his gaudy shirt.

"Look at that crazy fool! He'll break his neck or the horse's, and I don't give a damn which."

She saw him only as the apotheosis of all that she had remembered, the sublimation of her dreams

She slipped out before the end of the performance, and drearily went home, to find Mr. Trowbridge in the lower hall, heavily and beamingly jovial. She forced a smile for him, and he caught her by the shoulders and turned her to the light.

"Ah!" he cried. "Now that is what I call a happy bride's face! Look at that color! Look at those eyes!"