But again he said, peremptorily, "Wait." And again, as if
against her will, she paused. "If you have no scruples about wandering
over the mountains alone with that artist fellow, I do not see why you
should hesitate to favor me."
The man's words were, undoubtedly, prompted by what he firmly believed to
be the nature of the relation between the girl and Aaron King--a belief
for which he had, to his mind, sufficient evidence. But Sibyl had no
understanding of his meaning. In the innocence of her pure mind, the
purport of his words was utterly lost. Her very fear of the man was not a
reasoning fear, but the instinctive shrinking of a nature that had never
felt the unclean touch of the world in which James Rutlidge habitually
moved. It was this very unreasoning element in her emotions that made her
always so embarrassed in the man's presence. It was because she did not
understand her fear of him, that the girl, usually so capable of taking
her own part, was, in his presence, so helpless.
James Rutlidge, by the intellectual, moral, and physical atmosphere in
which he lived, was made wholly incapable of understanding the nature of
Sibyl Andres. Secure in the convictions of his own debased mind, as to her
relation to the artist; and misconstruing her very manner in his presence;
he was not long in putting his proposal into words that she could not fail
to understand.
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