Page:Raymond Spears--Diamond Tolls.djvu/41

 "It's that I am here to feel and enjoy," she told herself.

Up stream, the plane sloped up and miles back she could see the waters coming down toward her, a wave that rose surely to a crest a thousand miles away and a thousand feet in the air—such a wave as the sea never dreams of throwing, but which the imagination pictures as one floats in a low shantyboat somewhere down the face of that whelming swell. Suppose that wave should heave up and break? Fancy swinging under the crest of a wave breaking a thousand feet higher than one's head!

Delia, feeling that wave, shuddered a little. That wave, in fact, for her was swelling up and swinging over and breaking down upon her—not the Mississippi tide wave, but another wave, a spiritual wave which she believed and hoped would engulf her. It pleased her fancy to recall the river woman's quaint statement that the forks of the Ohio was the jumping-off place for some.

But while she enjoyed the sensation of the oblivion, and while she gazed with pleasure at the miles up stream and the miles down stream, and the great breadth of protecting torrent between her and the far shantyboats and the occasional ferries, she became conscious of a menace. A cold chill swept along her back. She looked up and down and around,