She was not Little Starbright.
He drew her closer. She trembled in the clasp of his arms. Her firm,
full young breast rose and fell in quick response to the driving
heart-beats. Again his thoughts shot back to the prophetic, perfect
figure of the girl at fifteen. He fought off a certain delicious,
overpowering intoxication, and forced himself to a bewildered
contemplation of her present powers of resistance to the hard problems
of life. She was strong of body, strong of heart, strong of spirit,
but was she strongly fortified with the endurance that must stand
unshaken through a period of sorrow and shame and--disgrace?
Again he looked into her half-closed eyes. He saw there the serene
integrity of Mary Braddock; the light of that woman's character was
strongly entrenched in the soul of Christine Braddock. He experienced
a sudden sense of relief, of comfort. She was made of the flesh and
spirit that endures. Product was she of Thomas Braddock in his
physically honest days, and of Mary, his wife, in whose veins flowed
the strain of a refinement elementally so pure that the bitterest
things in life had proved incapable of destroying a single drop of its
sweetness.
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