was no longer the big,
silent Norwegian who had sat at Margaret's feet and looked hopelessly
into her eyes. Tonight he was a man, with a man's rights and a man's
power. Tonight he was Siegfried indeed. His hair was yellow as the heavy
wheat in the ripe of summer, and his eyes flashed like the blue water
between the ice packs in the north seas. He was not afraid of Margaret
tonight, and when he danced with her he held her firmly. She was tired
and dragged on his arm a little, but the strength of the man was like
an all-pervading fluid, stealing through her veins, awakening under her
heart some nameless, unsuspected existence that had slumbered there all
these years and that went out through her throbbing fingertips to his
that answered. She wondered if the hoydenish blood of some lawless
ancestor, long asleep, were calling out in her tonight, some drop of
a hotter fluid that the centuries had failed to cool, and why, if this
curse were in her, it had not spoken before. But was it a curse, this
awakening, this wealth before undiscovered, this music set free? For the
first time in her life her heart held something stronger than herself,
was not this worthwhile? Then she ceased to wonder. She lost sight of
the lights and the faces and the music was drowned by the beating of her
own arteries. She saw only the blue eyes that flashed above her, felt
only the warmth of that throbbing hand which held hers and which the
blood of his heart fed. Dimly, as in a dream, she saw the drooping
shoulders, high white forehead and tight, cynical mouth of the man she
was to marry in December. For an hour she had been crowding back the
memory of that face with all her strength.

"Let us stop, this is enough," she whispered. His only answer was to
tighten the arm behind her. She sighed and let that masterful strength
bear her where it would. She forgot that this man was little more than
a savage, that they would part at dawn. The blood has no memories, no
reflections, no regrets for the past, no consideration of the future.

"Let us go out where it is cooler," she said when the music stopped;
thinking, _I am growing faint here, I shall be all right in the open
air_. They stepped out into the cool, blue air of the night.

Since the older folk had begun dancing, the young Norwegians had been
slipping out in couples to climb the windmill tower into the cooler
atmosphere, as is their custom.

"You like to go up?" asked Eric, close to her ear.