Page:Son of the wind.djvu/326

RV 308 any woman in any affair. The idea was fundamental. It streamed upon his mind like the day into his room. He was confounded by the clarity, the brilliance, the wonderful way it banished cruelty and made everything right. All he had to do was to surround himself with silence. He had no doubt of his motive. The thing sprang bold before him, something he believed in and had many times put to proof, the natural hardy motive of his life. To break, to tame, to change the compound of fury and timidity into the docile and controlled, useful to the controller, sent out among civilized things.

But Carron did not follow his creations thither. He belonged neither among wild nor tame. He stood at the point of transition, where the herds of the primitive passed through his hands into civilization. He stood between the two, to break, always to break. That was his affair in the world. But this instance was raised above his common experience of the world, his work still—but it transcended itself, as the horse his eyes were fixed upon now transcended his kind. For the creature was so far above his fellows; as Blanche had said, he seemed to travel upon wings, a little above the earth. So Carron's hopes. They were proud. He would have published them with trumpets had it not been for the one curious reason. That made the silence. It was not on his