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Whatever the spell had been, that rude, unconscious action broke it. He jerked away, as if he expected to be struck. "Girl I I" he gasped in amaze and sudden-dawning contrition "I kissed you but I swear it wasn't intentional I never thought...." The anger that Jean anticipated failed to materialize. He stood, breathing hard, with a hand held out in unconscious appeal.
Who could rob her of the rolling, gray, velvety hills, and the purple peaks and the black ranges, among which she had been found a waif, a little lost creature, born like a columbine under the spruces? Love, sudden-dawning, inexplicable love, was her secret, still tremulously new, and perilous in its sweetness.
The surprise and shame of his unconscious surrender, the certain hopelessness of it, the long years of communion with all that was wild, lonely, and beautiful, the wonderfully developed insight into nature's secrets, and the sudden-dawning revelation that he was no omniscient being exempt from the ruthless ordinary destiny of man all these showed him the strength of his manhood and of his passion, and that the life he had chosen was of all lives the one calculated to make love sad and terrible.