"I won't stand for corner-whisperings," Standing told him sternly. "If it happens you've got anything for my set of ears, they're listening. But it's right now or never."
Taggart's black and ominous scowl deepened, and he shuffled his feet back and forth, and in the end stamped them in his anger. But still he held the curb line upon himself.
"You always was a strong-headed man, Bruce, that would have things his way. So be it. And I guess, being a man myself that stands on his own two legs, I can say it all in one mouthful: You and me has always been friends. Are we that yet?"
Now for the first time Lynette Brooke, looking in from the adjoining room through a door just ajar, saw Timber-Wolf clearly, his face under his big hat unhidden as he turned a little in order to look straight at Taggart. He did not see her, and she looked her fill at him; he gave her a start of surprise, and after that start came a surge of admiration. He was a young, blond giant of a man, eyes very blue and laughing and _innocent_! And wide-spaced! A man no older than Babe Deveril, one who bore himself like some old buccaneer or Norse Viking, before men who would have given much for the courage and the power to fly at his bared white throat and drag the life out of him; a man who overflowed with his superabundant vital energy, and who stamped his own character, through sheer force of unbroken will, upon others about him; a man who believed in himself and who was at once implacable and gay. Heartless he looked, and yet full of the dancing joy of life. She felt herself on the instant both strongly drawn to him and frightened; the mad vision presented itself to her of herself in his mighty arms. And the odd tremor which shook her body, as she whipped back with flaming face, was compounded of thrill and shiver. He confused her; at once she was amazed that he could be like this and convinced that the owner of that glorious voice which she had heard pulsing out across the fields of night could be no jot different.... While she drew back to a dim corner of the room, she managed not to lose sight of him.
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.