Tortured by doubt, racked with love, she had gone her way silently; blaming herself one moment for the ease with which she had shown her love; staking her all the next on the honesty of the man who had kissed her hand in forgiveness in the old Devon church.
Making excuses, heaping the blame upon herself, wearying, wondering—and now!
She lifted her face, which shone like the Taj at noon, and the worshipful company of men looked at her, almost stunned by its incomprehensible radiance.
"Yes," she said softly, without thought of the Devil's nerve-storm.
"Yes, I will surely come!"
As she spoke there was a terrific report as the hind tyre of a passing car burst with due violence, a sudden convulsive bound as the Devil leapt with all four feet off the ground, and a thunder of hoofs as, with the bit between his teeth, he cleared for the open just as a man on a sixteen-hand bay turned in at the race-stand opening.
CHAPTER XXVIII
"To turn and wind a fiery Pegasus
And witch the world with noble horsemanship!"—Shakespeare.
The onlookers behaved in the orthodox runaway-horse manner.
Women screamed, or took the opportunity to manipulate a surreptitious powder-puff.
Men shouted and waved their topees, or shouted and performed equestrian gymnastics, and the jockeys en masse cursed their masters' presence, and the more or less mythical value of their respective mounts.