Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/546

Rh confusedly that he was moving about within, so close that it was as if she felt his touch. Then her door opened and he entered.

He stumbled slightly in the darkness before he found the switch of the lamp; and as he bent over it she saw that his face was ﬂushed, and that his eyes had an excited light which, in any one less abstemious, might almost have seemed like the effect of wine.

“Are you awake?” he asked.

She started up against the cushions, her black hair streaming about her small ghostly face.

“Yes.”

He walked over to the lounge and dropped into the low chair beside it.

“I’ve given that cur a lesson he won’t forget,” he exclaimed, breathing hard, the redness deepening in his face.

She turned on him in joy and trembling. “John!—Oh, John! You didn’t follow him? Oh, what happened? What have you done?”

“No. I didn’t follow him. But there are some things that even the powers above can’t stand. And so they managed to let me run across him—by the merest accident—and I gave him something to remember.”

He spoke in a strong clear voice that had a brightness like the brightness in his eyes. She felt its heat in her veins—the primitive woman in her glowed at [ 530 ]