But nothing was farther from his mind than the wish to touch her. She was a woman alone with him under somewhat hazardous circumstances, and he protected her instinctively and made her as comfortable as possible. Although he would have risen to the occasion as a matter of course, he was grateful that he was not with a woman who would expect to be made love to, but with this strange and delightful creature, who, exhilarated by the terrific speed and the danger, could enjoy herself in precisely his own fashion. He did not even ask her if she were frightened, although once, as they tore through a narrow gorge with the roar of waters far below, he leaned over the side of the carriage, holding the cushions firmly against her with his left hand, then, as he resumed his former position, remarked:
“Three hundred feet, I should think, and perhaps three inches between the wheels and the edge.”
She laughed, and he turned his eyes quickly to her white face, in which the dark eyes were more widely opened and eager than usual.
“You enjoy the idea of possibly being dashed to pieces on those rocks—getting out of it all.”
Her eyes met his in a cold flash. “Do you realize what you have said?”
“That you are the bravest woman I ever saw, but with no love of life. Could you be the greatest actress in the world otherwise?”
“I wonder if you really know what you are saying? But you are young—so very young.”
“What has that to do with it?”
“Well—perhaps—what?”
“Nothing, really. I have seen you look very old and very young, and every shade between. When you get that helmet on your head in Die Walküre, you look sixteen, much too young for the part. Just now you look like a fate. A woman who calls out of their graves other women that have been dead for centuries and gives them life again for four or five hours,—Wagner’s operas are much too long,—who makes them live so intensely that their very dust must feel the current,—why, of course, you have no age. Margarethe Styr disappears, ceases to exist. When she returns to her tenement, it must be with the sensation of being born again. For myself—well, perhaps I am forty masquerading as a boy.”