He had grown a mustache,
which was immaculately waxed. His trousers were immaculately creased,
his shoes were shining, and he stood before the door of his now
important office resting lightly on a cane. Keith grinned as he
witnessed how prosperity had bolstered up Percival along with the town.
His eyes quested for familiar faces as he went along. Here and there he
saw one, but for the most part he encountered strangers, lively looking
men who were hustling as if they had a mission in hand. Glaring real
estate signs greeted him from every place of prominence, and
automobiles began to hum up and down the main street that stretched
along the river--twenty where there had been one not so long ago.
Keith found himself fighting to keep his eyes straight ahead when he
met a girl or a woman. Never had he believed fully and utterly in the
angelhood of the feminine until now. He passed perhaps a dozen on the
way to barracks, and he was overwhelmed with the desire to stop and
feast his eyes upon each one of them. He had never been a lover of
women; he admired them, he believed them to be the better part of man,
he had worshiped his mother, but his heart had been neither glorified
nor broken by a passion for the opposite sex.
Pages:
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57