CHAPTER V
IMPROBABILITIES
AS long as his mind remained astonished into receptiveness, passive to the sharp point of the scholar's thought, so long Carron believed the conviction that had been thrust upon him. For that time he saw his adventure simplified. It spread before him definite and clear to get through as open land come upon abrupt from forest. But, no sooner had the recoiled reason time to gather itself than the reaction of feeling began; the rallying of logic, when the positive combative brain seized the question, pulling it apart; the rushing in of doubts from all sides; the swift review by skepticism of what was probable or improbable; and, last, the laughter! It was inaudible. It shook him inwardly. A woman? What had the sound of that word to do with the idea of a wild horse? Women, those creatures without initiative, compelled in their excursions into the wilderness to certain spaces and to limited hours, whose adventures, when they had them, were always unoriginal—the mere repetition of some man's greater
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