Passionate, obstinate, unyielding--he could be each and all in turn,
but, side by side with these exterior characteristics, there ran a
streak of almost feminine delicacy of perception and ideality of
purpose. Diana had once told him, laughingly, that he was of the stuff
of which martyrs were made in the old days of persecution, and in this
she had haphazard lit upon the fundamental force that shaped his
actions. The burden which fate, or his own deeds, might lay upon his
shoulders, that he would bear, be it what it might.
"Everything's got to be paid for," he had said one day. "It's
inevitable. So what's the use of jibing at the price?"
Diana wondered whether the price of that mysterious something which lay
in his past, and which not even intimate friendship had revealed to
her, would mean that this comradeship must always remain only that--and
never anything more?
A warm flush mounted to her face as the unbidden thought crept into her
mind. Errington had been down at Crailing most of the summer, staying
at Red Gables, and during the long, lazy days they had spent together,
motoring, or sailing, or tramping over Dartmoor with the keen moorland
air, like sparkling wine, in their nostrils, it seemed as though a
deeper note had sounded than merely that of friendship.
And yet he had said nothing, although his eyes had spoken--those vivid
blue eyes which sometimes blazed with a white heat of smouldering
passion that set her heart racing madly within her.
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