And when in going away--as I always did, finally--I made a little noise
which awakened her, she called and asked me if I had heard anything, I
said no, and pacified her by saying that I had been awake and watching
all the time. Then I despised myself for saying nothing more.
I constantly found myself despising my own decency. I felt the girl in
my arms a thousand times as I had felt her for those delicious hours the
night she had invited me to share the wagon with her, and we had sat in
the spring seat wrapped in the buffalo-robe, as she slept with her head
on my shoulder. I tormented myself by asking if she had really slept, or
only pretended to sleep. Once away from her, once freed from the
innocent look in her eyes, I saw in her behavior that night every
advance which any real man might have looked for, as a signal to action.
Why had I not used my opportunity to make her love me--to force from her
the confession of her love? Had I not failed, not only in doing what I
would have given everything I possessed or ever hoped to possess to have
been able to do; but also had I not failed in that immemorial duty which
man owes to woman, and which she had expected of me? Would she not laugh
at me with some more forceful man when she had found him? Was she not
scorning me even now?
I had heard women talk of greenhorns and backwoods boys in those days
when I had lived a life in which women played an important, a
disturbing, and a baleful part for every one but the boy who lived his
strange life on the tow-path or in the rude cabin; and now these outcast
women came back to me and through the very memories of them poisoned and
corrupted my nature.
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