Struggling half blindly and all silently they rose a little toward the
surface. Packard tightened his grip about her body, managed to
imprison one of her arms against her side, beat at the water with his
free hand, and so, just as his lungs seemed ready to burst, he brought
his nostrils into the air.
He drew in a great breath and struck out mightily for the shore,
seeking a less precipitous bank at the head of a little cove. As he
did so, he noted how her struggles had suddenly given over, how she
floated quietly with him, her free arm even aiding in their progress.
A little later he crawled out of the clear, cold water to a pebbly
beach, drawing her after him.
And now he understood that his destiny and his own headlong nature had
again made a consummate fool of him. The same knowledge was offered
him freely in a pair of gray eyes which fairly blazed at him. No
gratitude there of a maiden heroically succored in the hour of her
supreme distress; just the leaping anger of a girl with a temper like
hot fire who had been rudely handled by a stranger.
Her scanty little bathing-suit, bright blue like the discarded cloak,
the red rubber cap binding the bronze hair--she must have donned the
ridiculous thing with incredible swiftness while he batted an
eye--might have been utterly becoming in other eyes than those of Steve
Packard. Now that they merely told him that he was a blundering ass,
he was conscious solely of a desire to pick her up and shake her.
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