The World For Sale | Page 8

bridge was the second cataract, and
she would never have waked if she had been carried into it.
To Ingolby she was as beautiful as a human being could be as she lay
with white face upturned, the paddle still in her hand.
"Drowning isn't good enough for her," he said, as he fastened her canoe
to his skiff.
"It's been a full day's work," he added; and even in this human crisis he

thought of the fish he had caught, of "the big trouble," he had been
thinking out as Osterhaut had said, as well as of the girl that he was
saving.
"I always have luck when I go fishing," he added presently. "I can take
her back to Lebanon," he continued with a quickening look. "She'll be
all right in a jiffy. I've got room for her in my buggy--and room for her
in any place that belongs to me," he hastened to reflect with a curious,
bashful smile.
"It's like a thing in a book," he murmured, as he neared the waiting
people on the banks of Carillon, and the ringing of the vesper bells
came out to him on the evening air.
"Is she dead?" some one whispered, as eager hands reached out to
secure his skiff to the bank.
"As dead as I am," he answered with a laugh, and drew Fleda's canoe
up alongside his skiff.
He had a strange sensation of new life, as, with delicacy and gentleness,
he lifted her up in his strong arms and stepped ashore.
CHAPTER II
THE WHISPER FROM BEYOND
Ingolby had a will of his own, but it had never been really tried against
a woman's will. It was, however, tried sorely when Fleda came to
consciousness again in his arms and realized that a man's face was
nearer to hers than any man's had ever been except that of her own
father. Her eyes opened slowly, and for the instant she did not
understand, but when she did, the blood stole swiftly back to her neck
and face and forehead, and she started in dismay.
"Put me down," she whispered faintly.
"I'm taking you to my buggy," he replied. "I'll drive you back to

Lebanon." He spoke as calmly as he could, for there was a strange
fluttering of his nerves, and the crowd was pressing him.
"Put me down at once," she said peremptorily. She trembled on her feet,
and swayed, and would have fallen but that Ingolby and a woman in
black, who had pushed her way through the crowd with white, anxious
face, caught her.
"Give her air, and stand back!" called the sharp voice of the constable
of Carillon, and he heaved the people back with his powerful shoulders.
A space was cleared round the place where Fleda sat with her head
against the shoulder of the stately woman in black who had come to her
assistance. A dipper of water was brought, and when she had drunk it
she raised her head slowly and her eyes sought those of Ingolby.
"One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look
firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was
a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any one,
and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could not
be given.
"Such things are paid for just by accepting them," he answered quickly,
trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently
desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the regions
where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt.
"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour
shooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in my
life."
"I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked. "We only do such
things when we are very young."
She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips
did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak.
Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of

womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely
framed; such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such
individuality, yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light
brown, sweeping over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with
a sense of modesty, on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The
forehead was classic in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh,
even when pale as now, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the
woman in her, sex and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the
intellect and temperament showing in every line