SON OF THE WIND
turning to Carron. "Why weren't you careful? Why didn't you make it easy for her? Now, there'll be no stopping, there'll be no changing her. Oh, speak to her!" she entreated. "Blanche, listen to him!"
The contending voices beating on Carron's ears seemed to be holding him back. He heard words. He heard, but did not grasp their significance, only felt the force behind them, a tremendous inflated opposition to him. He wanted to lift his arms and dash down the clamor that was heaping up around him. If only they would wait, just wait, with all their demands and questions, which were nothing but words, only words in the air, until the great action was complete. Then there could be time in plenty for talks. He thought he spoke this to them, he thought he said they would have all night to settle their questions in, but for this business of his there was not an hour to waste, not a minute. Yet he was not sure what he had spoken, his mind was too full of a broad threshing tide of mixed emotions. He did not even remember how he left the women, nor at the moment of his going, which might have been the last time he was to see those two faces, how the faces had looked. Their memory was blank, as it is sometimes at crises, when the intense sensations of the soul obliterate the conscious vision. He heard
384
