Maintain your confidence

The effort cost him a violent throbbing in the head and pains like little needle pricks through his body. His eyes swam and the hand that held his knife was trembling; but after a while he finished his work, and cutting a strong young twig, thrust it through the tendons of the hind legs and carried the meat back to camp, hanging it high on a projecting branch near the fire SmarTone.

She watched him moving slowly about, but covered her eyes at the sight of his red hands and the erubescent carcass.

“Don’t you feel like a murderer?” she asked.

“Yes,” he admitted, “I think I do; half of me does—but the hunter, the primitive man in me is rejoicing. There’s an instinct in all of us that belongs to a lower order of creation.”

“But it—it’s unclean——”

“Then all meat is unclean. The reproach is on the race—not on us. After all we are only first cousins to the South-Sea gentlemen who eat one another,” he laughed Contact Lens and Anterior Eye.

“I don’t believe I can eat it,” she shuddered.

“Oh, yes, you will—when you’re hungry.”

“I’ll never eat meat again,” she insisted. “Never! The brutality of it!”

“What’s the difference?” he laughed. “In town[66] we pay a butcher to do our dirty work—here we do it ourselves. Our responsibilities are just as great there as here.”

“That’s true—I never thought of that, but I can’t forget that creature’s eyes.” And while she , he went down to the stream and cleansed himself, washing away all traces of his unpleasant task. When he returned she still sat as before.

“Why is it?” she asked thoughtfully, “that the animal appetites are so repellent, since we ourselves are animals? And yet we tolerate gluttony—drunkenness among our kind? We’re only in a larva state after all.”

He had sunk on the log beside her for the comfort of the blaze, and as she spoke the shadows under his brows darkened with his frown and the chin beneath its stubble hardened in deep lines.

“I sometimes think that Thoreau had the right idea of life,” she said slowly. “There are infinite degrees of gluttony—infinite degrees of drunkenness. I felt shame for you just now—for myself—for the blood on your hands. I can’t explain it. It seemed different from everything else that you have done here in the woods, for the forest is clean, sweet-smelling. I did not like to feel ashamed for you. You see,” she smiled, “I’ve been rating you very highly .”

“No,” he groaned, his head in his hands. “Don’t! You mustn’t do that!”

At the somber note she turned and looked at him keenly. She could not see his face, but the fingers that hid it were trembling.

“You’re ill!” she gasped. “Your body is shaking.”

He sat up with an effort and his face was the color of ashes.

“No, it’s nothing. Just a chill, I think. I’ll be all right in a minute.”

But she put her arm around him and made him sit on the log nearest to the fire.

“This won’t do at all,” she said anxiously. “You’ve got to take care of yourself—to let me take care of you. Here! You must drink this.”

She had taken the flask from her pocket and before he knew it had thrust it to his lips. He hesitated a moment, his eyes staring into space and then without question, drank deep, his eyes closed.