From a corner of her
eye she was aware that Whistling Dan had turned his head again to await
her first speech. Then she fixed her gaze on the wall of yellow flame.
The impulse to speak to him was like a hand tugging to turn her around,
and the words came up and swelled in her throat, but still she would not
stir.
In a moment of rationality she felt in an overwhelming wave of mental
coldness the folly of her course, but she shut out the thought with a
slight shudder. Silence, to Dan Barry, had a louder voice and more
meaning than any words.
Then she knew that he was sitting up on the couch. Was he about to stand
up and walk out of the room? For moment after moment he did not stir;
and at length she knew, with a breathless certainty, that he was staring
fixedly at her! The hand which was farthest from him, and hidden, she
gripped hard upon the arm of the chair. That was some comfort, some
added strength.
She had now the same emotion she had had when Black Bart slunk towards
her under the tree--if a single perceptible tremor shook her, if she
showed the slightest awareness of the subtle approach, she was undone.
It was only her apparent unconsciousness which could draw either the
wolf-dog or the master.
She remembered what her father had told her of hunting young deer--how
he had lain in the grass and thrust up a leg above the grass in sight of
the deer and how they would first run away but finally come back step by
step, drawn by an invincible curiosity, until at length they were within
range for a point blank shot.
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