eavy 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 to-night, 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 to-night, 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 worth while? 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.

She turned and looked at him with suppressed amusement. "How high is
it?"

"Forty feet, about. I not let you fall." There was a note of
irresistible pleading in his voice, and she felt that he
tremendously wished her to