His experience with women had not prepared him for a
ready understanding and acceptance of a girl like Alice. While he
was fully aware of her beauty, freshness, vivacity and grace, this
Amazonian strength of hers, this boldness of spirit, this curious
mixture of frontier crudeness and a certain adumbration--so to
call it--of patrician sensibilities and aspirations, affected him
both pleasantly and unpleasantly. He did not sympathize promptly
with her semi-barbaric costume; she seemed not gently feminine, as
compared with the girls of Virginia and Maryland. He resented her
muscular development and her independent disposition. She was far
from coarseness, however, and, indeed, a trace of subtle
refinement, although not conventional, imbued her whole character.
But why was he thinking so critically about her? Had his
selfishness received an incurable shock from the button of her
foil? A healthy young man of the right sort is apt to be jealous
of his physical prowess--touch him there and he will turn the
world over to right himself in, his own admiration and yours. But
to be beaten on his highest ground of virility by a dimple-faced
maiden just leaving her teens could not offer Beverley any open
way to recoupment of damages.
He tried to shake her out of his mind, as a bit of pretty and
troublesome rubbish, what time he pursued his not very exacting
military duties.
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