Caught as I was, on
the very brink of the precipice, I should almost certainly have slipped
and fallen over, in my dazed condition, when I tried to get up. If I'd
been alone, if he hadn't found me just when he did--!"
She shuddered at thought of what must almost inevitably have happened,
and covered her face with both hands. Her cheeks burned; she knew
emotion such as not once had Waldron's kiss ever been able to arouse in
her. The memory of how she, half-unconscious, had lain in that
stranger's arms, so powerful and tense; had been carried by him, as
though she had been a child; had felt his breath upon her face and the
quick, vigorous beating of his heart--all this, and more, dwelt in her
soul, nor could she banish it.
Gratitude? Yes, and more. For the first time in her two-and-twenty
years, Catherine had sensed the power, the virility of a real man--not
of the make-believe, manicured and tailored parasites of her own
class--and something elemental in her, some urge of primitive womanhood,
grappled her to that memory and, all against her will, caused her to
live and re-live those moments, time and time again, as the most strange
and vital of her life.
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