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His clear blue eyes kept on laughing; his was that silent laughter which arises from the soul, and which mocked and insulted and was like the cold mirth of Satan. And yet, in some vague way which she was all at loss to plumb, and which troubled her strangely, Lynette Brooke knew that this corsair of a man was laughing because there was cold anger in his heart and because, for some mysterious reason of his own, he was set on holding his anger hidden. It troubled her so that, within herself, she cried out passionately against knowing through leaping instinct anything of what might be going on within the dark caverns of the Timber-Wolf's mind and heart. She wanted him and herself to be as far apart as north and south; she meant them to be. And all the while that compelling interest which he awoke within her tugged mightily and she yielded to it in that, keeping out of his sight, she lost nothing of the play of expressions upon his face.

As yet she knew nothing of that one thing which Bruce Standing, forthright exponent of untrammelled manhood, held to be his greatest weakness; the one and only thing of which he was bitterly ashamed. A trifle, it amounted to; and a trifle he would have accounted it in any other strong man. Yet within his hard breast it awoke the intensest feeling of shame. And it was a thing which invariably sprang forth upon him and humiliated him whenever once he let his passions fly. A laughable thing, and yet one that put tears into his bright blue eyes. But, on guard against it, he strove to curb his anger.