skimmed the barrier, the hedge, flew through the air, dropped to its thudding hoofs again, and thundered down the tanbark, its nostrils stretched, its mouth open, its breath rushing from its great barrel of a body, it seemed the embodiment of savage prehistoric power. Renny, with his carven nose, his brown eyes blazing in his narrow, foxlike face, his grin that had always something vindictive in it, he too seemed possessed by this savage power.
No woman in this contest? What of the mare? That gaunt roan devil that carried him, leaped at the tug of his rein, galloped like the east wind speeding across the waves with him! Ah, she was feminine enough! Every inch of her. Hadn't she whinnied from her stall cries of challenge to the velvet-eyed stallion? Hadn't she stood in the straw and given from her gaunt body a big-boned foal that had not yet been broken? Hadn't she suckled that foal, nuzzling it gently, snuffing the sweetness of it? She was feminine enough, by God, thought Finch.
The boy's imagination, liberated by the tumult of plunging horses whose breath comes in warm gusts against his face as they pass, spreads itself like a fantastic screen between him and the reality of the scene before him. He sees Renny's mare, galloping toward him, continue to bear upon him instead of following the track. He sees her galloping across him, trampling him, crushing him under hoof, annihilating him. . . . He next witnesses the release of his soul from the trampled body. He sees his soul, opaque, iridescent, strangely shaped, leap to the back of the mare, behind Renny, clasping him about the waist with its shadowy yet savagely strong arms, and soaring with him above the circling riders, above the hand-clapping spectators, up among the lights which rise in rushing billows of colour toward a thunderous sky above. The drums beat, and the soaring music of the horns accompanies them. . . . He stands clinging to the paling, a lanky boy with hollow cheeks, hungry eyes, one bony shoulder-blade projecting a sharp ridge through his coat. His expression is so ridiculous that Renny, trotting tranquilly around the track, the blue
