“You don’t mean to say that you’ve become human enough to do a little ‘chasing’ for yourself?”
Philip did not affect to misunderstand. With the curious inner voice whispering that this was the proper time to answer a fool according to his folly, he said mildly: “Weren’t you continually setting me the example last year?”
The dapper one laughed again.
“You might go so far as to say that I am still setting it. I don’t mind telling you that right now I’m camping on the trail of one of the choicest little bits of womaninity you ever laid eyes on. If she shows up, I shall promptly shoo you away.”
Philip’s lip curled. “One of the Corinthians?” he queried.
“Not on your sweet life; nothing like it. She’s a black-eyed, black-haired little darling, all frost on the outside and fire on the inside—works in a millinery shop and comes home about this time every evening. She’s a little offish yet, but she’ll get over that pretty soon.”
While one might count ten, the flaring gas street-lights turned darkly red for Middleton’s listener. But his voice was low and quite controlled when he said, “Of course you know her name?”
“Yep; she never would tell me, but I got it from one of the girls she works with. It’s a boy’s name—Jean.”
Nothing is more certain than that the inhibitions are dependent, more often than not, upon purely extraneous circumstances: environment, the mental attitude of the moment, even such trivial influences as the cut of one’s clothes and the obligations imposed thereby. Clad in a flannel shirt, baggy trousers and miner’s boots, Philip had thought nothing of the civilized restraints when he had flung himself, tooth and nail, upon the drunken bully who was menacing Bromley in the bar-room of the Leadville hotel. But now, with the mining-camp rawnesses put safely behind him, the conventional fetterings were not so easily broken. Middleton was a petty libertine, to be sure, but he knew that a few straightforward words of explanation about the Dabney family and his own connection with it would put an end to the ex-tonnage clerk’s pursuit of the daughter.
But the cool words were not spoken. In the moment of hesitation the curious inner voice prompted vengefully, “Will you stand for that? Haven’t you found out yet that you are in love with Jean Dabney—the girl to whom this fat rake is offering the bitterest insult a man of his breed can offer to a woman of hers?” and at this flame-hot goading the inhibitory bonds became as smoking flax and he lashed out with a swift, fury-driven uppercut to the smooth-shaven jaw.