Then brush swished in their faces, and they stopped, waiting for the lightning again.

Kent was not anxious for it to come.

He drew the girl still closer, and in that pit of blackness, with the deluge about her and the crash of thunder over her head, she snuggled up against his breast, the throb of her body against him, waiting, watching, with him.

Her frailty, the helplessness of her, the slimness of her in the crook of his arm, filled him with an exquisite exultation.

He did not think of her now as the splendid, fearless creature who had leveled her little black gun at the three men in barracks.