There was also some mention of the hair in connection with a certain Java forest, with passing reference to the Chinese Wall and a voyage he had intended to make up the great Asian rivers. Not having personal experience in their navigation, said references were rather vague, but her imagination abundantly supplied the requisite flora and fauna from magazine articles and pictures. Porcelain towers, orchids, giant palms; deep jungle temples; the crowded boat life of the Yangtse-Kiang, junks and sampans with their cargoes of saffron-faced, slant-eyed Celestials, men, women, and children—especially children—her imagination improved on the lovely dreams she had so cruelly disrupted. He concluded with that:
“And you smashed it—all to smithereens.”
For a while she rode in silence. Apprehension and fright had given place to sorrow that contended tumultuously with delight for possession of her soul. “I’m sorry,” she spoke at last. “So sorry, but—you provoked it.”
“Why! How?”
He was reminded, of course, that he “lost interest in girls after they grew up.” She added, a little vindictively, “And you didn’t flirt with Mrs. Mills?”
“Only in self-defense. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, isn’t it?”
But she denied this bit of ancient wisdom. “No, it isn’t! And—and you kissed that dreadful girl! I—oh, I could have killed you!”
“Why?”
She was looking at him now, and the compound of bright anger, pleading and defiance, regret, love, hope, and despair that alternately flashed and swam in the wet eyes gave sufficient answer. It was then he plucked her from the saddle; crushed her to him with force that squeezed out, for the moment, the anger, regret, despair, left only love and hope.
Ensued the usual delirious moment when poor mortals conquer time and eternity, set at naught the black riddle of existence. Her face buried in his shoulder, his in her hair, they clung to each other while his horse moved slowly forward and hers went careering on over the next earth roll.