But as he
grew older, his reverence and his fear would not let him touch a
girl. Once a big girl, much older than he, came up behind him in the
play-ground and kissed him; he rubbed the kiss off with his hand,
and scoured the place with sand and gravel. One winter all the big
boys and girls at school began courting whenever the teacher was out
of sight a moment; at the noon-spell some of them sat with their
arms round one another. Lemuel wandered off by himself in the snows
of the deep woods; the sight of such things, the thought of them put
him to shame for those fools, as he tacitly called them; and now
what had he done himself? He could not tell. At times he was even
proud and glad of it; and then he did not know what would become of
him. But mostly it seemed to him that he had been guilty of an
enormity that nothing could ever excuse. He must have been crazy to
do such a thing to a young lady like that; her tear-stained face
looked her wonder at him still.
By this time she had told 'Manda Grier all about it; and he dared
not think what their thoughts of him must be. It seemed to him that
he ought to put such a monster as he was out of the world. But all
the time there was a sweetness, a joy in his heart, that made him
half frantic with fear of himself.
"Lemuel!"
He started up at the sound of Sibyl Vane's voice calling to him from
the dining-room which opened into the L.
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