* * * * *
Later, in the refuge of his own four walls and under the brooding solace
of an after-dinner cigar, he lost some of the intensiveness of his
former humor. But the force of the vehemence which had shaken him filled
him with much wonder and some apprehension. He was too much a man of
experience to deny questions when they were put to him squarely by
circumstances.
"You're not her brother ... you're surely not her husband. And I didn't
know it was the fashion for a...."
Lily Condor's clipped question struck him squarely now. Just what were
his expectations concerning Claire Robson? The thought turned him cold.
Essentially he was of Puritan mold, but he had always had a theory that
love of illicit pleasures must have been uncommonly strong in a people
who found it necessary to fight the flesh so uncompromisingly. Battling
with the elements upon the bleak shores of New England contributed, no
doubt, to the gray and chastened spirits that these grim folks had won
for themselves; spirits that colored and sometimes seeded swiftly under
the softer skies of California. San Francisco was full of these forced
blooms consumed and withered by the sudden heat of a free and
traditionless life. He knew scores of old-timers--his father's
friends--who had been gloriously wrecked by the passion with which they
met freedom's kiss.
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