She threw
up her face, and in a moment he had kissed her. He released her and
fell back from her aghast.
She looked at him.
"I--I didn't mean to," he panted. His heart was thundering in his
ears.
She put up her hands to her face, and began to cry.
"Oh, my goodness!" he gasped. He wavered a moment, then he ran out
of the room.
On the stairs he met 'Manda Grier coming up. "Now, Mr. Barker,
you're real mean to go!" she pouted.
"I guess I better be going," Lemuel called back, in a voice so husky
that he hardly knew it for his own.
XII.
Lemuel let himself into Miss Vane's house with his key to the back
gate, and sat down, still throbbing, in his room over the L, and
tried to get the nature of his deed, or misdeed, before his mind. He
had grown up to manhood in an austere reverence for himself as
regarded the other sex, and in a secret fear, as exacting for them
as it was worshipful of women. His mother had held all show of love-
sickness between young people in scorn; she said they were silly
things, when she saw them soft upon one another; and Lemuel had
imbibed from her a sense of unlawfulness, of shame, in the love-
making he had seen around him all his life. These things are very
open in the country. Even in large villages they have kissing-games
at the children's parties, in the church vestries and refectories;
and as a little boy Lemuel had taken part in such games.
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