It broke the tension. Their eyes dropped to Leff, who lay motionless and
unconscious, blood on his lips, a slip of white showing under his
eyelids. The doctor dropped on his knees beside him and opened his
shirt. Daddy John gave him an investigating push with the tent pole, and
David eyed him with an impersonal, humane concern. Only Susan's glance
remained on Courant, unfaltering as the beam of a fixed star.
His savage excitement was on the ebb. He pulled his hunting shirt into
place and felt along his belt for his knife, while his broad breast rose
like a wave coming to its breakage then dropped as the wave drops into
its hollow. The hand he put to his throat to unfasten the band of his
shirt shook, it had difficulty in manipulating the button, and he ran his
tongue along his dried lips. She watched every movement, to the outward
eye like a child fascinated by an unusual and terrifying spectacle. But
her gaze carried deeper than the perturbed envelope. She looked through
to the man beneath, felt an exultation in his might, knew herself kindred
with him, fed by the same wild strain.
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