She got on the horse and Sam stood beside her looking up.
"I'll tell the colonel in the morning," he said.
"What will he say?" she murmured, musingly.
"Damned ingrate," Sam mimicked the colonel's blustering throat tones.
She laughed and picked up the reins. Sam laid his hand on hers.
"How soon?" he asked.
She put her head down near his.
"We'll waste no time," she said, blushing.
And then in the presence of a park policeman, in the street by the
entrance to the park with the people passing up and down, Sam had his
first kiss from Sue Rainey's lips.
After she rode away Sam walked. He had no sense of the passing of time,
wandering through street after street, rearranging and readjusting his
outlook on life. What she had said had stirred every vestige of sleeping
nobility in him. He thought that he had got hold of the thing he had
unconsciously been seeking all his life. His dreams of control of the
Rainey Arms Company and the other big things he had planned in business
seemed, in the light of their talk, so much nonsense and vanity. "I will
live for this! I will live for this!" he kept saying over and over to
himself. He imagined he could see the little white things lying in Sue's
arms, and his new love for her and for what they were to accomplish
together ran through him and hurt him so that he felt like shouting in the
darkened streets.
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