It was a silence broken after a moment by a short choking cry, the
quick-breathing terror of a face turned suddenly up to him robbed of its
flush and quivering with a fear that still found no voice in words. He
felt the girl's arms straining against him for freedom; her eyes were
filled with a staring, questioning horror, as though his presence had
grown into a thing of which she was afraid. The change was tonic to him.
This was what he had expected---the first terror at his presence, the
struggle against his will, and there surged back over him the forces he
had reserved for this moment. He opened his arms and Meleese slipped
from them, her hands clutched again in the clinging drapery of
her bosom.
"I have come for you, Meleese," he said as calmly as though his arrival
had been expected. "Jean is my prisoner. I forced him to drive me to the
old cabin up on the mountain, and he is waiting there with the dogs. We
will start back to-night--_now_." Suddenly he sprang to her again, his
voice breaking in a low pleading cry. "My God, don't you see now how I
love you?" he went on, taking her white face between his two hands.
"Don't you understand, Meleese? Jean and I have fought--he is bound hand
and foot up there in the cabin--and I am waiting for you--for you--" He
pressed her face against him, her lips so close that he could feel
their quavering breath.
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