Passing along the bare avenue of silent dwellings he pushed open the door of Santa's place of refuge. Tiptoeing across the dusty floor, he knelt by the window, peering out.
Seconds ticked into minutes. Ten minutes elapsed, twenty, half an hour. There was no sign of life. He strove to calm his fears. If she had been caught, it simplified matters. But such arguments failed to pacify him. He pictured her as he had seen her on the Ryndam—a splendid animal, proud, fastidious, mildly contemptuous; and then as he had seen her that morning, broken, desperate, defiant.
Out there in the happy sunshine they might be carrying her away. They would drag her through the public streets as a criminal. They would lock her in a cell. They would hale her to a court to be gaped at. They would paw over her private life. They would pry into the intimacies of her love-affairs. Nothing that was hers would be sacred. Then, when the sport grew tedious, an old man, turned moralist by reason of decrepitude, would don a black cap and intrust her to the mercy of Almighty God.
He staged her arrest as though he had seen it happen. He had strolled straight through her pursuers' ambush. They had let him pass. Directly she had appeared, they had risen out of the brush. Twisting her arms behind her, they had snapped handcuffs on her slender wrists. She had struggled, sinking to the ground, faint with terror. They had jerked her to her feet, half carrying her, pushing her forward.
He raged impotently. What brutes men were! Nothing that she had done to his sex was bad enough. He thrust the vision from him. Each time it returned.
The door creaked. He leaped as if he had been shot. She pressed a finger to her lips. Coming close, so that he could feel the rise and fall of her bosom, “He's here,” she whispered.
V
Who?”
She was puzzled by his stupidity. Then, “You know,” she murmured. “He saw me in the distance and started to run toward me. I dropped to my knees and circled, approaching the hut from the back.”
“But he couldn't have recognized you.”