Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/289

 married woman, and a man not her husband had held her in his arms and kissed her! Not once, but twice—three times! And she had let him! She had wanted him to! Why, such a woman was unfit to be the guide of a daughter, was unfit to be the honored mother of a son, was unfit to be the trusted wife of any faithful man. Felix, six feet away, in the bed beside her, lay asleep and unaware, as confident in her goodness as she was in his. She had looked down upon Felix once. She had been ashamed of him. But now it was herself she was ashamed of—herself she looked down upon. Well—it should never happen again. She would see to it that Roger never—never touched her again.

Futile, useless resolve. There was Roger to deal with. Her clinging hands had told him something he wanted terribly to have them tell him again. And they did, a brief fortnight later! And afterward occurred the same numbness, the same remorse, the same resolves, the same slowly increasing longing in her every day he was absent to see him again—to feel him again, and the same giving-in. The gentle candlelight he had been in her life became a threatening fire finally that she fought day and night. The hidden spring broke through the surface at last, and became a swift, eager, rushing stream, she desperately tried to push back into the mountain's side and bury again.