Jeff caught her in his arms, kissed her
passionately on the lips, the eyes, the soft round throat.
"You do . . . like me," she purred happily.
Abruptly he pushed her from him. Where were they drifting? He must
get his anchors down before it was too late.
Somehow he broke away, leaving her there hurt and bewildered at
his apparent fickleness, at the stiffness with which he had beaten
back the sweet delight inviting them.
Jeff went to his rooms, his mind in a blind chaotic surge. He sat
before the table for hours, fighting grimly to persuade himself he
need not put away this joy that had come to him. Surely friendship
was a good thing . . . and love. A man ought not to turn his back
on them.
It was long past midnight when he rose, took his father's sword
from the wall where it hung, and unsheathed it. A vision of an
open fireplace in a log house rose before him, his father in the
foreground looking like a picture of Stonewall Jackson. The kind
brave eyes that were the soul of honor gazed at him.
"You damned scoundrel! You damned scoundrel!" Jeff accused himself
in a low voice.
He knew his little friend was good and innocent, but he knew too
she had inherited a temperament that made her very innocence a
anger to her.
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