They made their way to the car where it stood under a single, wide-spreading tree and all climbed in.
“Chances are he’s dead in there,” Wilson remarked. “After a little we’ll have a look.”
Macomber felt a wild unreasonable happiness that he had never known before.
“By God, that, was a chase,” he said. “I’ve never felt any such feeling. Wasn’t it marvellous, Margot?”
“I hated it.”
“Why?”
“I hated it,” she said bitterly. “I loathed it.”
“You know I don’t think I’d ever be afraid of anything again,” Macomber said to Wilson. “Something happened in me after we first saw the buff and started after him. Like a dam bursting. It was pure excitement.”
“Cleans out your liver,” said Wilson. “Damn funny things happen to people.”
Macomber’s face was shining. “You know something did happen to me,” he said. “I feel absolutely different.”
His wife said nothing and eyed him strangely. She was sitting far back in the seat and Macomber was sitting forward talking to Wilson who turned sideways talking over the back of the front seat.
“You know, I’d like to try another lion,” Macomber said. “I’m really not afraid of them now. After all, what can they do to you?”
“That’s it,” said Wilson. “Worst one can do is kill you. How does it go? Shakespeare. Damned good. See if I can remember. Oh, damned good. Used to quote it to myself at one time. Let’s see. ‘By my troth, I care not; a man can die but once; we owe God a death and let it go which way it will, he that dies this year is quit for the next.’Damned fine, eh?”
He was very embarrassed, having brought out this thing he had lived by, but he had seen men come of age before and it always moved him. It was not a matter of their twenty-first birthday.
