SON OF THE WIND
had been of his imagining, or was the helmet shape he saw now a piece of his fancy.
Again Blanche's fingers touched his arm. She spoke to him in a low voice. "Keep well out until we are on the left of her. We can ride in there quite close. See that rock on the ground, the large one with the neck? We can tie the horses there."
It was this girl when he had pointed out the Sphinx from afar, who had surveyed it with unrecognizing eyes, and turning her back, passed it by like a clandestine friend in a crowd. Now she named it with the sex its aspect claimed, she moved around its feet as if the ground here were familiar to her. She went with the extraordinary rapidity he had noticed in her when she had an object in her mind, as if the quickest time was too long for getting at what she wanted. Before his astonishment could shape itself on his lips she was out of saddle and running across the interval of space, her shadow flying small beneath her feet. Her feet were climbing in the slide of stones before he had done fastening the horses.
Was she trying to get away from him? he wondered. The questions that had been on his tongue were forgotten. He needed his breath, all of it, if he meant to get abreast of her; and even with lungs like bellows and the feet of Mercury, reaching her
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