Vivienne was not pleased. Valentine’s action had been abrupt, almost rude, and it annoyed her to be treated with so much unceremoniousness. And yet in her heart there was such a profound and sorrowful compassion for the young man whose unhappy state of mind she realized only too fully, that it kept her from any outward display of resentment.
He was laughing and talking somewhat wildly, and there was a reckless gleam in his eye that made her avoid meeting his glance.
They were both excellent skaters, swift and graceful of foot; and for a few minutes Vivienne had a kind of painful enjoyment in the rapid rushing through the air, but at last she said gently: “Had we not better return?”
“Not yet!” he exclaimed, and his grasp of her fingers tightened.
The girl had one of her quick, unerring intuitions. Valentine had fallen into one of his rash humors, in which he was a slave to the impulse of the moment. Without sufficient hardihood to plan a deliberate misdeed, scarcely a day passed without his falling heedlessly into one.
The eastern bank of the Arm that they were close to seemed to be rushing by them like the dim and hazy outline of some huge beast tearing along in the opposite direction from that in which they were going. The light and noise of the skating party were far behind them. Away in front was the smooth, black ice, dark and treacherous, that they would soon be on. Then beyond the ice, where it grew thinner and thinner, was the icy, open water.
“Valentine,” she said calmly, “what are you doing?” and she again strove to draw her hand from his.
He laughed wildly, made a sudden turn, and was skating backward, his desperate eyes looking into hers, his left hand outstretched to seize her right. He would make sure of her other hand in order that she might not escape him.
She saw the mocking, reckless devil looking out of his eyes, and the hot, French blood rose in her veins. She held back her hand from him; dangling from it was a stout leather strap by which she had been pulling Judy about. At the end of the strap was a buckle.
“Coward!” she exclaimed in bitter contempt, and swinging the strap in her hand, she struck him on the forehead.