With fingers that
trembled slightly she lit a cigarette. Sheathed in her close-fitting
gown, she made a strong carnal appeal to him, but there was between
them, too, a close bond of the spirit. He made no apologies, no
explanation.
Presently she turned and looked at him. Only the deeper color beneath
her eyes betrayed any excitement.
"Unless I'm a bad prophet you'll get the answer you want when she comes
back, Colby."
He thought her reply to his indiscretion superb. It admitted complicity,
reproached, warned, and at the same time ignored. Never before had she
called him by his given name. He took it as a token of forgiveness and
renunciation.
Why was it not Genevieve Mallory that he wanted to marry? It would be
the wise thing to do. She would ask nothing of him that he could not
give, and she would bring to him many things that he wanted. But he was
under the spell of Sheba's innocence, of the mystery of her youth, of
the charm she had brought with her from the land of fairies and
banshees. The reasonable course made just now not enough appeal to him.
He craved the rapture of an impossible adventure into a world wonderful.
The mine-owner carried with him back to his office a sense of the futile
irony of life.
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