Tempest slid a leg out and followed it where the pony stood four-square with drooped head and smoking flanks.
"It saves time," he said. "Come down to the canoe with me, Ducane. I want some particulars of this." He smiled, saluting Jennifer. "Don't think of it again," he said. "I apologise—for Lucas."
Jennifer watched the two swing down the narrow trail, and she pressed her hands together over her breast. One of the ugly things had come suddenly, bald and hideous. And it was her husband who had brought it, uncaring. She shut her little sharp teeth down on her lip in swift anger and disgust. Then Tempests's voice came to her memory. "I want you to make allowances—there's a good deal of the brute in human nature."
What was there in Ducane? She knew that she did not know. He had come into her life like a wild, vivid storm; bearing her out with the force of him into a strange world of hot kisses that half-frightened her and boisterous words that blew away all her shy excuses, until there was a new plain ring on her finger, and his thick, gripping arm about her before she understood if this great thing which had come on her was love in very truth. Her senses were whirling still when he brought her home and kissed her on the lips as he lifted her out of the rig.
"Our home, Jenny," he said. "And not fit for you, little girl. But, by , I'll make it fit now I've got reason."
His very oath had excited her, thrilled her. She had not heard men speak so before, and it was surely part of this great virile world out of which he had come to her with his loud voice and his manner that rushed all before it. Now, even as the canoe shot off from the bank and Ducane shouted words after it, there swept over her, horribly, vividly, the contrast between her husband and Tempest. Harry had coarse words and coarse thoughts that he no longer troubled to hide from her. Harry was—he was one who might do ugly things; one for whom she must make allowances. Make allowances for him! For Harry! With a gasp of sudden blinding agony she turned and fled through the dark house to the hithermost end of it, hearing Ducane calling after her:
"Jenny! Hi, Jenny! I want you."
