"Running away?" quickened the man. "From what?" 155
"I don't know!" laughed Daphne.
"To—what?" questioned the man.
"I don't care!" laughed Daphne.
With another perceptible start the young man turned upon her.
"Don't you know it's not safe for you to be alone like this?" he stormed. "Don't you know how wild this country is? Don't you know there are bears and panthers and wild cats and snakes and——. And I almost shot you," he repeated dully. "Except for this— this infernal tremor in my right hand that everybody is trying to cure me of—I should probably have killed you."
"Do you really mean," cried Daphne with a fresh shock of excitement, "that except for just one little chance I might be lying here dead this very minute? Dead and all over, I mean? Tennis and parties and new hats and everything all over and done with? As dead and all over as—as Noah?" she gasped.
"Yes," acknowledged the man.
Solemnly for a moment in the poignant awe of it all the jaded worldly-wise face and the eager ingenuous young face measured 156 this matter of life or death in the depths of each other's eyes.
Then for sheer woman-nature the girl edged a little bit nearer to the poor man who had almost killed her. And for sheer man- nature the man put his arm around the poor girl whom he had almost killed. It was sheer Nature's nature though that blew a strand of the girl's bright, fragrant hair across the man's lips.