Page:Son of the wind.djvu/228

RV 212 choked by a tide of feeling half tender, half angry, which was making him helpless to explain himself. "I didn't mean to frighten you. I only meant—"

"I don't in the least care what you meant," she interrupted, with a hard, dry voice, she seemed to gather from her chest.

"Yes, you do!" Carron said, suddenly fierce. She was trying to build up a wall between them, and he would have it down. "You don't tell me you were playing then, when we—a woman like you wouldn't!"

"I didn't know what I was doing."

"You did." He would not let her off so easily. "We both knew a good deal better then than we do now, when we are talking so much about it. I hadn't seen you for so long—two days—how could I tell how I was going to be? It came—and now it's done. And everything looks different. Can't you understand? I have never felt like this before. I didn't know there was such a feeling!" He broke off, gazing at her. "This isn't the usual thing," he said slowly, "and you know it."

Her eyes, half lifted, took this in with a long, silent regard, without expressing a spark of what she hid, without visible change—glide of iris, or flutter of lashes—gradually a new expression swam up in them, and he understood the fact which he had