Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/358

 to ignore it, for there were times when, so little careful was she to guard herself, that this shyness suggested, invited, appealed, signalled; times when, without my deeper knowledge of her sex, I could have sworn that the true woman-call rang in my ears. But a treaty is a treaty, on paper or on honor, and ours would never be broken by black treachery of mine, let her eyes fall under my own with never so fluttering an allurement.

They were not bad days, as days go in this earth-life of too much exact knowledge. Miss Kate rowed me over still waters and walked beside me in green pastures. At times like these she might even seem to forget. She would even become, I must affirm, more nearly Peavey than was strictly her right; for it was plain that our treaty must involve certain stipulations of restraint on her part as well as on my own. The burden was not all to be mine. But these moments I learned to withstand, remembering that she was a woman. That was a circumstance not hard to remember when she was by. It is probable that my heart could not have forgotten it, even had my trained head learned blandly to ignore it.

Further to enliven those days, I permitted Jim to give her lessons in believing everything. When I told her of this, she said, "I need them, I'm so out of practice." That was the nearest we had come to touching upon the interview of a certain afternoon. I should not have considered this a forbidden topic, but her shyness became pitiful at any seeming