SON OF THE WIND
She was looking to him to do that apparently, since he had been the doer of everything. But this stupid, timid woman had undone the whole. All his diplomacy in a wreck, all he had hoped to save for both in agonizing nerves and suffering confidence, all, all precipitated around his ears. That bridge of silence with which he had hoped to get her across unscathed all gone. Nothing was left but to take her up in the strong grasp of his own conviction and carry her through the rough current of the truth. "She will have to suffer while I go through with this business," he thought. That confident smile Mrs. Rader wore made him furious. He pulled his sleeve from her grasp and walked quickly out of the room. With all his astonishment and anger he was horribly conscious of the slipping past of the hours. Time, the enemy of triumph, of rapture, of the perfect moment, was streaming past. He began to run.
Past noon, and rain in that cloud! This moment he ought to be climbing the Sphinx, and setting foot in her sacred window. The hard floor changed to strewn pine needles beneath his feet, and a cold wind blew upon him. He ought to be on the very ground this instant, with the captive in his hands. He saw his pony tethered a rod distant. It would have been easy to catch stirrup and get away, to the great affair. No, it wouldn't do! Flight would be the
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