SON OF THE WIND
unaware in her provocativeness. She could not help it, but there she was! Talking with her, he had to look at her, listen to her. A blue eye might blunt the edge of logic, and resolution be seduced by the bend of a waist. Even now, hearing her voice calling to her mother, he loitered to listen, as if the timber of it had been a note in singing. No, he wanted to keep out of that blind path where mind and sense were mixed together. Stick to business and deal with men! Thus he told himself, and thinking it found himself involved with a household of women.
He had returned to find all the heavy batteries of house cleaning unmasked. It seemed natural that the scholar should shut himself in with the peace ofhis books, while the upheaval in the hotel went forward. He would have been helpless in such an emergency; and when he did venture out, summoned to lunch, he moved a dismayed spirit, and became involved in the furniture, armies of which occupied the halls. But Carron was born for the handling of objects, animate or inanimate. In the first days of his arrival, while operations had been limited to the more polite business of sweeping, he had kept his distance, but it was impossible to remain aloof when two women were struggling with ladders and hammers. He passed from a morning under open
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