“Oh, the wire that's over the tracks of respectability and vested interests and special privilege.”
She had been looking at him, but now her gaze went to the fire with that slow tilt of the chin he liked. Another color wave swept the oval of the soft cheeks.
“You've got more friends than you think,” she said in a low voice.
“I've got one little friend I wouldn't like to lose.”
She did not speak and his hand moved forward to cover hers. Instantly a wild and insurgent emotion tingled through him. He felt himself trembling and could not steady his nerves.
Without a word Nellie looked up and their eyes met. Something electric flashed from one to another. Her shy fear of him was adorable.
“Oh, don't, don't!” she murmured. “What will you think of me now?”
He had leaned forward and kissed her on the lips.
Jeff sprang to his feet, the muscles in his lean cheeks standing out. Some bell of warning was ringing in him. He was a man, young and desirous, subject to all the frailties of his sex, holding experiences in his past that had left him far from a puritan. And she was a woman, of unschooled impulses, with unsuspected banked passions, an innocent creature in whom primeval physical life rioted.
He moved toward the door, his left fist beating into the palm of his right hand. He must protect her, against himself—and against her innocent affection for him.