Lemuel was pleased at that. Statira seemed prettier
than ever in this mood of reverence.
“Well, don’t talk too much when I’m
gone,” said ’Manda Grier, and before anybody
could stop her, she ran out of the room. But she
put her head in again to say, “I’ll be
back as soon’s I can take this key home.”
Lemuel did not know what to do. The thought of
being alone with Statira again was full of rapture
and terror. He was glad when she seized the door
and tried to keep ’Manda Grier.
“I—I—guess I better be
going,” he said.
“You sha’n’t go till I get back,
anyway,” said ’Manda Grier hospitably.
“You keep him, S’tira!”
She gave Statira a little push, and ran down the stairs.
Statira tottered against Lemuel, with that round,
soft shoulder which had touched him before. He
put out his arms to save her from falling, and they
seemed to close round her of themselves. She threw
up her face, and in a moment he had kissed her.
He released her and fell back from her aghast.
She looked at him.
“I—I didn’t mean to,”
he panted. His heart was thundering in his ears.
She put up her hands to her face, and began to cry.
“Oh, my goodness!” he gasped. He
wavered a moment, then he ran out of the room.
On the stairs he met ’Manda Grier coming up.
“Now, Mr. Barker, you’re real mean to
go!” she pouted.
“I guess I better be going,” Lemuel called
back, in a voice so husky that he hardly knew it for
his own.
Lemuel let himself into Miss Vane’s house with
his key to the back gate, and sat down, still throbbing,
in his room over the L, and tried to get the nature
of his deed, or misdeed, before his mind. He
had grown up to manhood in an austere reverence for
himself as regarded the other sex, and in a secret
fear, as exacting for them as it was worshipful of
women. His mother had held all show of love-sickness
between young people in scorn; she said they were silly
things, when she saw them soft upon one another; and
Lemuel had imbibed from her a sense of unlawfulness,
of shame, in the love-making he had seen around him
all his life. These things are very open in the
country. Even in large villages they have kissing-games
at the children’s parties, in the church vestries
and refectories; and as a little boy Lemuel had taken
part in such games. But as he grew older, his
reverence and his fear would not let him touch a girl.
Once a big girl, much older than he, came up behind
him in the play-ground and kissed him; he rubbed the
kiss off with his hand, and scoured the place with
sand and gravel. One winter all the big boys
and girls at school began courting whenever the teacher
was out of sight a moment; at the noon-spell some
of them sat with their arms round one another.
Lemuel wandered off by himself in the snows of the
deep woods; the sight of such things, the thought of
