Meantime, within the skin tepee, where all three had been summarily
placed, Maren Le Moyne sat with her head upon her arms and her arms
crossed on her drawn-up knees. Across the opening, just inside the
flap, the body of McElroy lay inert, though she knew that a low breath
rose and fell within him, for she had laid a hand upon his breast.
Beside her, close in the darkness, De Courtenay sat upright and alert,
as if no forty hours of torture had hail their will of him. She could
hear his quick breathing.
Anguish rode her soul like a thousand imps and the slow tears were
falling, bitter as aloes, the symbol of defeat. Every fibre of her
being trembled with love of the man stretched beyond; she longed with
all the passion of her nature to gather the tawny head in her arms, to
kiss the silent lips, the closed eyes. Through the dim cloud that
seemed to envelop him since that night at the factory steps, holding
her from him like bars of iron, she heard again the ringing sweetness
of his voice:
"From this day forth you are mine! Mine only and against the whole
world! I have taken you and you are mine!"
False as Lucifer, but, O bon Dieu! sweet as salvation to the lost
A hundred feelings tore at her heart,--bitterness and unbearable scorn
of her own blundering, and wild protest against failure, but chief of
all was the love that drew her to this man like running water to the
sea.
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