as of old so long as she stood
by his side. At such moments he forced himself to imagine a man
playing the fool with Rachel, and immediately there came a full normal
explosion of parental rage; and he knew, without the possibility of
doubt, that such a man had better never have been born than encounter
Rachel's father. But these imaginations could not help him. Thoughts
about Rachel and thoughts about Norah, which once had mingled, were
now like two rivers running side by side but never meeting.

Again, what had rendered the fight hopeless was his recognition of the
overwhelming fact that the spell was mutual. It was not only that he
wanted her, Norah wanted him. There lay the sweetly venomous throb of
the poison. In her eyes he was _not_ old; his gray hair did not appall
her, his rugged frame did not repel her. All night and all day,
during months, yes, during years, she had told him: "You are _not_
old; you _need_ not be old; _I_ can make you young."

He thought, as he had thought again and again, of her artlessness, her
ignorance, and her total absence of compunction. It seemed so
wonderful. She drifted toward him as the petal of a flower comes on
running water, as corn seeds blow through the air, as anything small
and light obeying a natural law. She did not in the least understand
social conventions. She was not troubled with one thought of right or
wrong; she neither meditated nor remembered. How wonderful. The ten
commandments and the catechism that she knew by heart, all the hymns
she had sung and all the sermons she had heard, did not exert the
faintest restraining influence. They had no real meaning for her
probably, and she could not therefore bring them into relation with
concrete facts. In her innocence, in her virginal simplicity, she
would keep the book of life close--sealed until he opened it roughly
for her at its ugliest page.

He, or somebody else!

Suddenly he threw away the faded wood-blossoms, sprang up from the
tree, and paced to and fro. A wave of revolt came sweeping through and
through him. Was he not making mountains out of mole-hills?

If he could trample down all this sentimental fiddle-de-dee, what was
the plain English of the case so far as she was concerned? Unbidden,
innumerable circumstances stored from local knowledge offered
themselves as guides for argument. Take any girl of that class--well,
what are her chances? Why, you are lucky if you keep 'em straight
until the time come