CHAPTER VI
WILD THINGS AND TAME
A SIGNAL and a smile through the window. They had taken few words to understand each other, he thought. The promise of a morning among the hills with this responsive girl whetted anticipation sharp. The way his adventure led was going to be pleasant and very easy, the merest short-cut. If only he did not feel so deadly uncertain that there was anything at the end of it! He tried to make himself believe that what she had seen was indeed the thing he wanted; but he doubted that women saw things as they were. He knew he himself desired the perfect material object; that he was sensitive to every failure of what he saw to fulfil this, recognizing defect and perfection and calling them by name. But he suspected that around any sort of object a woman could fold her imagination and transform it to herself. He had seen miserable figures of men thus translated, and how would it be in the lesser matter of a horse? Those large imaginative eyes of hers looked very ready to believe wonders. No doubt they were
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