Sophie didn’t believe in his God, nor his work; he stopped short of asking if he himself any longer had full and implicit belief in these things, or if he had simply accepted them without question as he had accepted so many other things in his brief career.  But she believed in him and cared for him.  He took that for granted too.  And love covers a multitude of sins.  He had often had occasion to discourse upon various sorts of love—­fatherly love and brotherly love and maternal affection and so on.  But this flare of passionate tenderness focussing upon one slender bit of a girl was something he could not quite fathom.  He would have contradicted with swift anger any suggestion that perhaps it was merely wise old Nature’s ancient method efficiently at work for an appointed end.  He had been so thoroughly grounded in the convention of decrying physical impulses, of putting everything upon a pure and spiritual plane, that in this first emotional crisis of his life he could no more help dodging first principles than a spaniel pup can help swimming when he is first tossed into deep water.

Still—­he was not a fool.  He knew that his concern was not for Sophie Carr’s immortal soul, nor for the beauty and sweetness of her spirit, when he was near her, when he touched her hand, nor even in that supreme moment when he crushed her close to his unquiet heart and pressed that hot kiss on her lips.  It was the sheer flesh and blood womanliness of her that made his heart beat faster, the sweet curve of her lips, the willowy grace of her body, the odd little gestures of her hands, the melody of her voice and the gray pools of her eyes, eyes full of queer gleams and curious twinkles—­all these things were indescribably beautiful to him.  He loved her—­just the girl herself.  He wanted her, craved her presence; not the pleasant memory of her, but the forthright physical nearness of her he desired with an intensity that was like a fever.

Just the excitement of feeling—­as according to his lights he had a right to feel—­that they stood pledged, made it hard for him to get down to fundamentals and consider rationally the question of marriage, of their future, of how his appointed work could be made to dovetail with the union of two such diverse personalities as himself and Sophie Carr.

A hodge podge of this sort was turning over in his mind as he sat there, now and then absently feeling the dusky puffiness under one eye and the tender spot on the bridge of his nose where Tommy Ashe’s hard knuckles had peeled away the skin.  He still had a most un-Christian satisfaction in the belief that he had given as good as he had got.  He was not ashamed of having fought.  He would fight again, any time, anywhere, for Sophie Carr.  He did not ask himself whether the combative instinct once aroused might not function for lesser cause.

He came out of this reverie at the faint rustle of footsteps beyond his door—­which was open because of the hot fire he had built.