WISDOM SET AT NAUGHT
had come by his knowledge of the horse in some way not quite open, or as Blanche had put it, not like a gentleman. Well, that description fitted the fellow like a cap. Evidently that finished his question. He threw the matter of Ferrier to the winds. "Then, if he is nothing to you, why won't you—" His arms tried to clasp her, and closed on empty air.
How she laughed at him! "What a funny thing you are, always looking for a reason, or a fact!"
It dawned on him that she had no reason in the world to keep away from him, except that mysterious, buried reason of women, that she wanted to. She seemed to find this interval while they were near, yet not so near as even to clasp hands, the most to be cherished; like the hour in which they walked, beautiful only because the sun is coming, yet most beautiful before it rises.
He could not understand her here. What he wanted, he wanted to have in fact, not to dream of how he might have it; he lacked the poison of the idealist, who suspects the thing he can touch. He loved the more for possessing. Her holding him off appeared to him a sentimental scruple; but the awe love brings to its object made him almost patient with her whim. Love—the word had not been used between them; it might not yet have been formed in her mind; and he was as shy of the spoken sound
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