She was like an animal a man has trapped, watching him narrowly, understanding something of his purpose, groping to read it all. When her eyes left him at all it was to travel in a flash to the door, to come back as swiftly. He still stood in the way. He was almost over her, so that he could be upon her before she was fairly on her feet.
Now the wild rise and fall of her breasts had lessened a little. She breathed more regularly, with now and then a long, lung-filling sigh. She lay with one arm flung above her head, the other at her side. He saw the red marks of his hands upon her wrists and frowned.
He had been as gentle as he could. But only unmerciful strength, not gentleness, could have quieted her. He thought how different she was from any girl in that outside world of which she spoke as a land of wickedness.
He, too, kept his eyes upon her, her and the open door. But he glanced about the room. The interior of the cabin was just what he could have imagined it to be. A few rough chairs, a table, some dishes, a fireplace with a littered hearth, a partition across the room with a bunk on each side.
He found that he was breathing as quickly as she was. His forehead was wet. As he looked down at her, resting, she seemed merely a slender, sun-browned slip of a girl. He marveled at the strength in that trim little body.
“I am sorry if I hurt you,” he said quietly when a few moments had passed in silence. “I didn’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you ever. Won’t you believe me?”
She made no answer, but continued to stare at him, a hint of a frown gathering her brows, her eyes dark with distrust. From the depths of his heart he pitied her. Would it not be better if he turned now and went out of the house, leaving her? If he went his way back over the mountains and into the “outside world,” carrying not even the tale to tell of her? Mad, born of a mad father, what hope lay in life for her?
“Little Paula,” he said gently, soothingly, as he might have spoken to a very little girl, “I am sorry for you. Very sorry, little Paula. I want to be your friend. Can’t you believe me?”
Troubled eyes, eyes filled with distrust and fear and emotions which blended and were too vague for him to grasp, answered him silently. He moved a step; her eyes, full of eagerness, turned to the open door.
“No,” he said steadily. “You can’t go yet. Pretty soon I am going to let you go; you and your father. And I will go away and not even tell that you are here. He is your father, isn’t he?”