akly, his shaken mind incapable of
comprehending things as they were, his abasement over the breach that he
had committed being so profound. She withdrew her hand. When it was gone
out of his, he remembered how warm it was with the tide of her young
body, and how soft for his own work-roughened fingers to meet and
enfold.

"I must go now," said she again. Her feet sounded in the corridor as she
ran away. A little way along she stopped. She was beyond his sight, but
her voice sounded near him when she called back "Good-bye!"

She had not gone in anger nor displeasure, thought he, getting hand of
his confused senses after a while, standing as she had left him, the
flowers in his hand. Strangely exulting, strangely thrilling, mounting a
moment like an eagle, plunging down now like a stone, Joe walked his
cell.

What had he done, drawn on by that which he had read in her eyes in that
poignant moment! In jail, locked behind a grated door of steel, he had
taken her hand and drawn her to him until the shock of the bars had
called back his manhood. He had taken advantage of her friendship and
sympathy.

Prison was no place for love; a man locked in jail charged with a
crime had no right to think of it. It was base of him, and unworthy.
Still--mounting again in a swift, delicious flight--it was sweet to
know what her eyes had told him, sweeter to rest assured that she had
not left him in scorn. Down again, a falling clod. Unless he had
misinterpreted them in the ignorance of his untutored heart. Yet, that
is a language that needs no lexicon, he knew.

Who is so simple, indeed, as to be unaware of that? How different this
passion from that which Ollie's uncovered bosom had stirred; how he
burned with shame at the memory of that day!

Up and down he strode the morning through, his long, thin legs now spare
in his boot-tops, his wide, bony shoulders sharp through his coat. The
strong light fell on his gaunt face as he turned toward the window;
shadows magnified its hollows when he turned toward the door. Now that
the panic of it had left him, the sweetness of it remained.

How soft her hand was, how her yielding body swayed in his arm! How
delicious her breath was on his face; how near her eyes, speaking to
him, and her lips; how near her parted, warm, red lips!

He took up the Book, and turned with trembling hands to a place that he
remembered well. There was something that he had read, not feeling, not
understanding, wo