incongruous as this beautiful vital superbly fashioned girl talking of
passion in precisely the same tone as she would have talked of chickens.
He felt the primitive man's impulse to beat her black and blue and then
make her his creature. As Isabel turned her eyes she was astonished at
what she saw in his. Gwynne's eyes were blazing. There was a dark color
in his face, and even his mouth, somewhat heavy, and generally set, was
half open. She fancied that so he looked when on a platform facing the
enemy, and thoroughly awake.

"What are you angry about?" she asked, calmly. "That I devote myself to
my sex instead of to yours? They need me more than any leader they have
evolved so far. There are millions of women of your sort. I want nothing
that your sex has left to offer. I will find a happiness unimaginable to
you, in living absolutely within myself and independent of all that
life, so far, has to give."

Then Gwynne exploded, and forgot himself. He flung himself forward, and
catching her upper arms in the grip of a vise shook her until her teeth
clacked together. "Damn you! Damn you!" he stammered. "What you want is
to be the squaw of one of your own Indians!"

"Let me go!" gasped Isabel, furious, and in sharp physical pain. "Do you
want to turn the boat over? Have you gone mad? I'll _kick_ you!"

"Good!" said Gwynne, releasing her, and sitting back. "That is the only
feminine speech you have made since I have known you. I make no apology.
You need never speak to me again. Set me ashore over there. I can take
the train when it comes along."

"You pinched me! You hurt me!" cried, Isabel in wrath and dismay. "I
hate you!"

"And your sentiments are cordially returned. Will you put me on shore?"

"I don't care what you do. You hurt me! You hurt me!" And Isabel dropped
her head into her arms and burst into a wild tempest of tears, like a
child that has had its first whipping.

Gwynne laughed aloud. "We are running into a mud bank," he said, "and
the tide is going out."

Isabel made a wild clutch at the tiller ropes, and brought the boat back
into the channel. But she could scarcely see, and Gwynne with a
contrition he had no intention of displaying offered to control the
launch. She vouchsafed him no reply, and as she did not steer for the
land, he retired to the extreme end of the boat and studied the scenery.
He was determined not to go through even the form of an apology, but he
was equally determined upon a r