In the flash of an instant it had been done. A wave message
of light and color, a molecular agitation and integration, a certain
minute though definite corrugation in a brain recess,--and there it
was, a picture complete! The blazing sunlight on the beetling black; a
slender gray form, radiant, starting forward to the vision from the
marge where light and darkness met; a fresh young morning smile
wreathed in a flame of burning gold.
It was a picture he looked at often, and the more he looked the greater
was his desire, to see Frona Welse again. This event he anticipated
with a thrill, with the exultancy over change which is common of all
life. She was something new, a fresh type, a woman unrelated to all
women he had met. Out of the fascinating unknown a pair of hazel eyes
smiled into his, and a hand, soft of touch and strong of grip, beckoned
him. And there was an allurement about it which was as the allurement
of sin.
Not that Vance Corliss was anybody's fool, nor that his had been an
anchorite's existence; but that his upbringing, rather, had given his
life a certain puritanical bent. Awakening intelligence and broader
knowledge had weakened the early influence of an austere mother, but
had not wholly eradicated it. It was there, deep down, very shadowy,
but still a part of him. He could not get away from it.
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