Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/152

 blame her for this; but now she forgot them. There was no use of thinking about them until morning; here she was adrift under the stars with the man she most liked of all she had met since—since—

Her mind went back to that man who had been with her in that other event, something like this—to that friend who, so she had told David Herrick, was dead; and her feeling did not except him. She did not yet know David Herrick nearly so well; but what she knew, she liked better. And she had thought she had loved that other man.

He's certainly a contrast to S, she quoted to herself. They were her own words she was quoting, those which she wrote in her diary the night she met David Herrick. He has will and character. He's innocent and strong.

"Character," she reflected with herself. It seemed to her that she had come to Northwestern with a determination to make her expedition with character this time. The innocence of this strong man beside her appealed to her, also. For plainly he was innocent, not only of personal impurity, but even of the smaller self-indulgences; she felt that, on the other morning beside their caves of ice, she had set him really to play for the first time in his life. Undoubtedly he had taken part in games many times; but that morning for the first time she had freed his feeling to the spirit of play.

She felt: "That's what he wants more than anything else in the world; and he didn't know it. Alice Sothron didn't know it; or, if she did, she couldn't give it to him. I can."