[The Firing Line by Robert W. Chambers]@TWC D-Link book
The Firing Line

CHAPTER XVIII
6/27

I feel very restless, very heathenish." ...

She cast a slanting side-glance at him, lips parting with soundless laughter; and in the witchery of the moon she seemed exquisitely unreal, head tipped back, slender throat and shoulders snow-white in the magic lustre that enveloped them.
Resting one bare arm on the marble she turned, chin on shoulder, looking mischievously down at him, lovely, fresh, perfect as the Cherokee roses that spread their creamy, flawless beauty across the wall behind her.
Imperceptibly her expression changed to soft friendliness, to tenderness, to a hint of deeper emotion; and her lids drooped a little, then opened gravely under the quick caress of his eyes; and very gently she moved her head from side to side as reminder and refusal.
"Another man's wife," she said deliberately....

"Thy neighbour's wife....

That's what we've done!" Like a cut of a whip her words brought him upright to confront her, his blood tingling on the quick edge of anger.
For always, deep within him, lay that impotent anger latent; always his ignorance of this man haunted him like the aftermath of an ugly dream.
But of the man himself she had never spoken since that first day in the wilderness.

And then she had not named him.
Her face had grown very serious, but her eyes remained unfathomable under his angry gaze.
"Is there any reason to raise that spectre between us ?" he demanded.
"Dear, has it ever been laid ?" she asked sorrowfully.
The muscles in his cheeks tightened and his eyes narrowed unpleasantly.
Only the one feature saved the man from sullen commonness in his suppressed anger--and that was his boyish mouth, clean, sweet, nobly moulded, giving the lie to the baffled brutality gleaming in the eyes.
And the spark died out as it had come, subdued, extinguished when he could no longer sustain the quiet surprise of her regard.
"How very, very young you are after all," she said gently.


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