What was this hold she had upon me? Was I bewitched, that my mind
refused to function sanely, and that judgment and reason were
dethroned by some mad sentiment which I steadfastly refused to believe
was love? I had never been in love. I was not in love now--the
very thought was preposterous. How could I, Thomas Billings, the
right-hand man of the late Bowen J. Tyler, Sr., one of America's
foremost captains of industry and the greatest man in California,
be in love with a--a--the word stuck in my throat; yet by my own
American standards Ajor could be nothing else; at home, for all
her beauty, for all her delicately tinted skin, little Ajor by her
apparel, by the habits and customs and manners of her people, by
her life, would have been classed a squaw. Tom Billings in love
with a squaw! I shuddered at the thought.
And then there came to my mind, in a sudden, brilliant flash upon
the screen of recollection the picture of Ajor as I had last seen
her, and I lived again the delicious moment in which we had clung
to one another, lips smothering lips, as I left her to go to the
council hall of Al-tan; and I could have kicked myself for the
snob and the cad that my thoughts had proven me--me, who had always
prided myself that I was neither the one nor the other!
These things ran through my mind as Nobs and I made our way through
the dark village, the voices and footsteps of those who sought us
still in our ears.
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