Hugh's hardness and told him limping fairy tales and doctored his
hurts; not the accepted necessity, but a woman--a woman young, yes,
young. In the instant when he had glimpsed her face, broken and
quivering, the tight lips parted and the hair disarranged about
flushed, quivering cheeks, the eyes deep with widened pupils, she
had revealed beauty and passion--the two halves of youth. How blind,
how blind Hugh had been, blind and selfish and greedy, drinking up
the woman's heart, feeding upon her youth!




CHAPTER XII


"When you sit so silent, Pete," Sylvie said softly, "I sometimes
wonder if you're not staring at me."

"When I'm making a trap," he answered, smiling a little to himself
and instinctively shifting his gaze, "I can't very well be staring
at you, can I?"

He was kneeling on the ground before the cabin door, she sitting on
the low step under the shadow of the roof. Her chin rested on the
backs of her hands, the limber wrists bent up a little, the sleeves
slipped away from her slim, white wrists. Her face was brightly rosy,
her lips very red--at once a little stern, yet very sweet.

"Traps are cruel," she said.