The Victory

He awoke with a start.

The Indian girl lay asleep on a blanket by the fire. The world of moon-haunted jungle and water was very quiet. Firelight faintly haloed Keela's face and brought mad memories of the soft light of the Venetian lamp at the Sherrill fete. He noted the pure, delicate regularity of feature, the delicate, vivid skin--it was paler than Diane's--and flaming through his brain went the dangerous reflection that conquest lay now perhaps in the very hollow of his hand.

Desire had driven him on to things unspeakable. It had clouded his brain, fired his blood to ugly resolve, blinded every finer instinct with its turbulent call, until the siren who beckons men onward through the marshland of passion had flung the gift at his feet in the haunted wilds.

Staring at the tranquil, delicate face of the sleeper by the camp fire, a great horror of the scarlet hours behind him awoke suddenly in Carl's heart. There had been a girl who cried. And he had laughed and shrugged and voiced an ironical philosophy of sex for her consolation. There was no philosophy of sex, only a hideous injustice which Man, the Hunter, willfully ignored. There were faces in the fire--faces like that of Keela, that had lured to sensual conquest and faded.

Trembling violently, Carl stared long and steadily at the Indian girl. There had been a time, before he sank to the bottom of the pit, when her face had awakened in him an eager deference. The moon darkened. A white wall of mist settled thickly over the Glades. Then came other thoughts. Philip trusted him. He must not forget. And the immortal spark of control lay somewhere within him. Unbridled passion of mind and body had made him very ill. Very well, then, it behooved him to exorcise the demon while this tormenting clarity of vision whirled the dread kaleidoscope of his careless life before him in honest colors.