She did not look back, but sped as straight as a frightened hare
to the covert; and by this brilliant, though unconscious coquetry, she
had wrested the victory from him at the moment when it had appeared to
fall too easily into his hands.
"Well, it's all right now. I'll take better care in the future," he
thought, his self-reproach extinguished by the assurance that, after
all, he had done nothing that justified the intrusion of his conscience.
"By Jove, she's a beauty--but she's not my kind all the same," he added
as he strolled leisurely homeward--for like many persons whose moral
standard exceeds immeasurably their ordinary rule of conduct, he
cherished somewhere in an obscure corner of his brain an image of
perfection closely related to the type which he found least alluring in
reality. Humanly tolerant of those masculine weaknesses he shared, he
had erected mentally a pinnacle of virtue upon which he exacted that
a frailer being should maintain an equilibrium. A pretty woman, it was
true, might go at a merry pace provided she was not related to him, but
he required that both his mother and his aunt should be above suspicion.
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