thing he did not understand. He had no finer feelings except in
relationship to things strong, swift and brilliant, he had no tenderness
for the weakness of others, even the weakness of women.

He had seized on Phyl as a Burgomaster gull might seize on a puffin chick,
he had picked her up on the road to carry her off regardless of everything
but his own desire for her--a desire so strong that he would have dashed
her and himself to pieces rather than that another should possess her.

Well, as he watched her seated on the straw in that ruined cabin, subdued,
without energy, and entirely at his mercy, a will that was not his will
rose in opposition to him. Some part of himself that had remained in utter
darkness till now woke to life. It was perhaps the something that despite
all his strange qualities made him likeable, the something that instinct
guessed to be there.

It stood between him and Phyl. He was conscious of no struggle with it
because it took the form of helplessness.

Nothing but force could make her give him what he wanted. The thing was
impossible, beyond him. He felt that he could do everything, fight
everything, subdue everything--but the subdued.

There was something else. Weakness had always repelled him, whether it was
the weakness of the knees of a horse or the weakness of the will of a man.
Phyl's weakness did not repel him but it took the edge from his passion.
It was almost a form of ugliness.

He had determined on finding help to send some one back for Phyl; any of
the coloured folk hereabouts would be able to pilot her to Grangersons. He
was not troubling about the broken phaeton or the horses; the horses had
plenty of food and water; so far from suffering they would have the time
of their lives. They might be stolen--he did not care, and nothing was
more indicative of his mental upset than this indifference toward the
things he treasured most.

All to the left of the grass road, the trees were thin, showing tracts of
marsh land and pools, and the melancholy green of swamp weeds and
vegetation.

The vegetable world has its reptiles and amphibians no less than the
animal; its savages, its half civilised populations, and its civilised.
The two worlds are conterminous, and just as cultivated flowers and
civilised people are mutually in touch, here you would find poisonous
plants giving shelter to poisonous life, and the amphibious giving home to
the amphibious.

The woods on the right we