Tales of her pale beauty were common and not tame, but
she was all and more than she had been described. And yet why had
no one told him she was so young? This woman's youth and
attractiveness amazed him; he felt that he had made a startling
discovery. Was she so cold, after all, or was she merely reserved?
Red hair above a pure white face; a woman's form wrapped in his
blanket; ripe red lips caressing the rim of his mean drinking-cup!
Those were things to think about. Those were pictures for a lonely
man.
She had not been too proud and cold to let him help her. In her
fatigue she had allowed him to lift her and to make her more
comfortable. Hot against his palms--palms unaccustomed to the
touch of woman's flesh--he felt the contact of her naked feet, as
at the moment when he had placed them in the cooling water. Her
feeble resistance had only called attention to her sex--to the
slim whiteness of her ankles beneath her short riding-skirt.
Following his first amazement at beholding her had come a
fantastic explanation of her presence--for a moment or two it had
seemed as if the fates had taken heed of his yearnings and had
sent her to him out of the dusk--wild fancies, like these, bother
men who are much alone.
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