remembered the question that Harry Seagreave had asked her. "What does
life mean to you?" Ah, since that first night in the mountains life
seemed to have expanded into infinite horizons before her widening
vision. She dreamed over them, forgetful for the moment of the man
beside her, until he, turning in the full tide of his talk, pressed his
lips ardently, passionately to hers.

Taken by surprise, she uttered one of her fluent Spanish oaths and,
springing to her feet, stood with her body slightly bent forward, her
hands on her hips, gazing at him with her narrow, gleaming eyes. Her
apathy was gone, she was alive now to her finger tips.

He rose, too. "Honey, what is it?" he questioned dazedly. "What's got
you now?"

"Don't touch me," she said tensely. "Don't dare to touch me."

He looked at her unbelievingly and then fell back a pace or two. "My
Lord! What's the matter with you?" he cried.

"I don't know," she muttered wildly. Her eyes still measured him, his
bold, obvious good looks, his ruddy self-complacency, his habitual and
shallow geniality, the satisfied vanity of a mouth steadily becoming
looser; the depiction of years of self-indulgence in the little veins on
his highly colored cheeks; the sagging lines of his well-set-up figure,
ever taking on more flesh.

So she saw him, not perhaps as he was, but in the light of her own harsh
and unmodified criticism, and mercilessly she reflected upon him all the
scorn she felt for herself. She did not consider or even remember that