This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

THE SUPERB MOMENT

like to call it that—not for taking the horse. There's nothing wrong with that."

"There is, there is!" Her voice, without rising, gave a tremendous sense of the rising tide of will. A flush covered her face like a cloud and in the middle of that her eyes looked singularly pale and bright. "He isn't meant to be tame! He can't be."

"Now, my dear girl," he broke in, "we've had all that out before, and it's absurd. Am I to lose the thing I came here for, and have gone through God knows what to come at, and got, because you have a notion or a dream?"

In the pause he was aware of the close odor of the stable stuffing his nostrils. He heard the mustang eating steadily, and the stumble as the creature caught its foot in the trailing bridle. He heard above his head, somewhere higher up than the roof of the place, a restless rushing like the audible passing of the hours. Beneath his eyes the girl's face appeared a silvery oval, most curiously quiet except that her hand was pressed against her throat, and queer little convulsive movements disturbed her mouth. "You asked me to be good to you," she said suddenly. "You asked me to be generous; you said you loved me. Be good to me now. Be generous to me! Show me that what you said is true.

379