baby cheek and tempting neck showing against the background of the
shadows behind her. He was aware of a distinct longing to take her in
his arms and crush her to him, as he would pluck a red berry from a
bank, and feel its stain upon his lips. Stain! A stain was a thing that
was hard to remove. There were blood-stains sometimes and agonies; and
yet men wanted to pluck the berries and feel the stain upon their lips!

He was not under the hallucination that he was suddenly falling in love
with this girl. He did not name the passionate outcry in his soul love.
He knew she had been a charmer of many, and in yielding himself to her
recognized power he was for the moment playing with a force that was new
and interesting, with which he had felt altogether strong enough to
contend for an evening or he would not have come. That it should thrill
along all his senses with this unreasoning rapture was most astonishing.
He had never been a fellow to "fall" for every girl he met, and now he
felt himself gradually yielding to the beautiful spell about him with a
kind of wonder.

The lights and coloring of the room that had smote his senses
unpleasantly when he first entered had thrown him now into a kind of
delicious fever. The neglected wine sparkling dimly in the costly
glasses seemed a part of it. He felt an impulse to reach out, seize a
glass, and drain it. What if he should? What if he flung away his ideas
and principles and let the moment sway him as it would, just for once?
Why should he not try life as it presented itself?

These fancies fled through his brain like phantoms that did not dare to
linger. His was no callow mind, ignorant of the world. He had thought
and read and lived his ideas well for so young a man. He had vigorously
protested against weakness of every kind; yet here he was feeling the