And Denny from
his garden hailed him joyfully. But Dan did not check his pace. Reaching
his own gate he broke fairly into a run, and leaping up the stairway,
rushed into his room, closing and locking his door. Then he stood,
breathing hard, and smiling grimly at the foolish impulse that had made
him act for all the world like a thief escaping with his booty.
He puzzled over this strange feeling that possessed him, the feeling
that he had taken something that did not belong to him, until the thought
struck him that there might, after all, be good reason for the fancy;
that it might indeed be more than a fancy.
Pacing to and fro the length of his little study he recalled every
detail of that meeting in the Academy yard. And as he remembered how he
had consciously refrained from making known his position to the young
woman--not once, but several times when he knew that he should have
spoken, and how his questions, combined with the evident false impression
that his words had given her had led her to speak thoughts she would
never have dreamed of expressing had she known him, the conviction grew
that he had indeed--like a thief, taken something that did not belong to
him. And as he realized more and more how his silence must appear to her
as premeditated, and reflected how her fine nature would shrink from what
she could not but view as a coarse ungentlemanly trick he grew hot with
shame. No wonder, he told himself, that he had instinctively shrunk from
looking into the faces of the people whom he had met and had fled to the
privacy of his rooms.
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