The Hunted Woman | Page 7

pure blue depths of eyes! In her he
saw now everything that was strong and splendid in woman. She was
not girlishly sweet. She was not a girl. She was a woman--glorious to
look at, a soul glowing out of her eyes, a strength that thrilled him in
the quiet and beautiful mystery of her face.
"You were going without saying good-bye," she said. "Won't you let
me thank you--a last time?"
Her voice brought him to himself again. A moment he bent over her
hand. A moment he felt its warm, firm pressure in his own. The smile

that flashed to his lips was hidden from her as he bowed his blond-gray
head.
"Pardon me for the omission," he apologized. "Good-bye--and may
good luck go with you!"
Their eyes met once more. With another bow he had turned, and was
continuing his way. At the door Joanne Gray looked back. He was
whistling again. His careless, easy stride was filled with a freedom that
seemed to come to her in the breath of the mountains. And then she, too,
smiled strangely as she reëntered the tent.
CHAPTER III
If John Aldous had betrayed no visible sign of inward vanquishment he
at least was feeling its effect. For years his writings had made him the
target for a world of women, and many men. The men he had regarded
with indifferent toleration. The women were his life--the "frail and
ineffective creatures" who gave spice to his great adventure, and made
his days anything but monotonous. He was not unchivalrous. Deep
down in his heart--and this was his own secret--he did not even despise
women. But he had seen their weaknesses and their frailties as perhaps
no other man had ever seen them, and he had written of them as no
other man had ever written. This had brought him the condemnation of
the host, the admiration of the few. His own personal veneer of
antagonism against woman was purely artificial, and yet only a few had
guessed it. He had built it up about him as a sort of protection. He
called himself "an adventurer in the mysteries of feminism," and to be
this successfully he had argued that he must destroy in himself the
usual heart-emotions of the sex-man and the animal.
How far he had succeeded in this he himself did not know--until these
last moments when he had bid good-bye to Joanne Gray. He confessed
that she had found a cleft in his armour, and there was an uneasy thrill
in his blood. It was not her beauty alone that had affected him. He had
trained himself to look at a beautiful woman as he might have looked at
a beautiful flower, confident that if he went beyond the mere

admiration of it he would find only burned-out ashes. But in her he had
seen something that was more than beauty, something that for a
flashing moment had set stirring every molecule in his being. He had
felt the desire to rest his hand upon her shining hair!
He turned off into a winding path that led into the thick poplars,
restraining an inclination to look back in the direction of the Otto camp.
He pulled out the pipe he had dropped into his shirt pocket, filled it
with fresh tobacco, and began smoking. As he smoked, his lips wore a
quizzical smile, for he was honest enough to give Joanne Gray credit
for her triumph. She had awakened a new kind of interest in him--only
a passing interest, to be sure--but a new kind for all that. The fact
amused him. In a large way he was a humourist--few guessing it, and
he fully appreciated the humour of the present situation--that he, John
Aldous, touted the world over as a woman-hater, wanted to peer out
through the poplar foliage and see that wonderful gold-brown head
shining in the sun once more!
He wandered more slowly on his way, wondering with fresh interest
what his friends, the women, would say when they read his new book.
His title for it was "Mothers." It was to be a tremendous surprise.
Suddenly his face became serious. He faced the sound of a distant
phonograph. It was not the phonograph in Quade's place, but that of a
rival dealer in soft drinks at the end of the "street." For a moment
Aldous hesitated. Then he turned in the direction of the camp.
Quade was bolstered up on a stool, his back against the thin partition,
when John Aldous sauntered in. There was still a groggy look in his
mottled face. His thick bulk hung a bit limply. In his heavy-lidded eyes,
under-hung by watery pouches of sin and dissipation, there was a
vengeful and beastlike glare. He was surrounded by his friends.