Presently Muriel paused. “Wait a minute,” she said. “My boot has got some sand in it.”
She sat down upon the ground and pulled it off; while Daniel, being in no hurry to return to the world, tethered the horses by rolling a small boulder on to the trailing ends of the reins. This done, he came to her, and, sitting beside her, helped her to put on the boot once more.
She was tired physically, and tired also of being angry. The astonishing solitude caused her heart, as it were, to go to him for companionship. Here in this tremendous silence, in this enveloping obscurity, she seemed to belong to him, to be his property.
He put his arms about her. “Why have you been so unfriendly to me today?” he asked, reproachfully.
She leaned her head back, and her hand went up around his neck. “Because I love you, Daniel,” she whispered.
She drew him down to her. At that moment she had no morals: she had shaken the conventions from her like so many pieces of useless armour. Her education had ever taught her to put small value upon such methods of protection; and now, with a mental shrug, they fell wholly from her. She wished only to be his, body and soul: here couched in the lap of this great Mother Earth, and in the presence of the starry host of heaven.
For a moment Daniel held her tightly within his arms; and the tempest of his passion carried him forward to the brink of heedless disaster. But mentally, as well as physically, he was a mighty man; and now his philosophic training in control did not fail him.
Roughly he threw her arms from him, and, rising to his feet, gripped her wrist. “Get up,” he commanded her. “For God’s sake get up!”
He dragged her up to him, and his fingers must have left bruises upon her arm.
“O Daniel,” she murmured, and in her abandonment there was almost laughter in her words, and almost tears. “I’m yours—yours to do what you like with. You can put me in your harîm if you want to.”