Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/247

 "Anything you please. Do you want me to carry you?"

All the fury she could crowd into her glance flew to his eyes. But she never spoke the words which stormed at her tongue. Something was forming in his eyes that reminded her of the morning in Venice. In another moment he would pick her up and carry her down-stairs. Angry as she was, she had not the courage to meet such an event.

She flung her hair out of her eyes, wrung it, made a loose knot of it, turned and staggered—for her body, minus the exaltation, weighed unutterable tons—into the main saloon. The door banged after her. She would never forgive him. In these tremendous unforgetable moments both had broken through the shell of civilization. They were two human beings possessed of little more than instincts. A man revels in the recurrence of primordial instincts. No woman does, because she is afraid of instincts. Nature has warned her that these are traps.

Naturally Ruth was first to recover her poise, to resume her shell. She was honest enough later to make allowances for his roughness, urged by his terror for her safety. But she could not shut out the feel of his arms. As the shell closed over her in its entirety she was conscious of a great depression.

It was hours before William crawled back into his shell. He hated it; he knew it for just what it was—boundary lines, stone walls, moats. He had had a taste of such wonderful freedom that he