The
excitement of her adventure was too near, the emotions of the day
too poignantly vivid, to lose their hold on her at once. For the
first time in her life she lay lapped in the illimitable velvet
night, countless unwinking stars lighting the blue-black dream in
which she floated. The enchantment of the night's loveliness
swept through her sensitive pulses and thrilled her with the
mystery of the great life of which she was an atom. Awe held her
a willing captive.
She thought of many things, of her past life and its incongruity
with the present, of the man who lay wounded at the Lazy D, of
this other wide-shouldered vagabond who was just now in the
shadows beyond the firelight, pacing up and down with long, light
even strides as he looked to his horse and fed the fire. She
watched him make an end of the things he found to do and then
take his place opposite her. Who and what was he, this
fascinating scamp who one moment flooded the moonlit desert with
inspired snatches from the opera sung in the voice of an angel,
and the next lashed at his horse like a devil incarnate? How
reconcile the outstanding inconsistencies in him? For his every
inflection, every motion, proclaimed the strain of good blood
gone wrong and trampled under foot of set, sardonic purpose,
indicated him a man of culture in a hell of his own choosing.
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