Читать книгу The Ball of Fire онлайн

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“It’s like being out of the world.” He was astonished to find in himself the sudden growth of a poetic spirit, and his voice had in it the modulation which went with the sentiment.

“This was created,” mused Gail, as if answering an inner question. “Why should the clumsy minds of men destroy the simplicity of anything so vast, and good, and beautiful, as our instinctive belief in the Creator?”

Finding no answer in his experience to this unfathomable mystery, Edward E. Allison very wisely kept still and admired the scenery, which consisted of one girl framed tastefully in a miscellaneous assortment of snowflakes. When he tried to unravel the girl, he found her a still more fathomless mystery, and gave up the task in a hurry. After all, she was right there, and that was enough.

When she was quite finished with the view, she turned and went down the hill, and Edward Allison nearly sprained his spinal column in getting just ahead of her on the steepened narrow path. It was treacherous walking just there, with the freshly fallen snow on the shale stones. He was heartily glad that he had taken this precaution, for, near the bottom of the hill, one of her tiny French heels slid, and she might have fallen had it not been for the iron-like arm which he threw back to support her. For just an instant she was thrown fairly in his embrace, with his arm about her waist, and her weight upon his breast; and, in that instant, the fire which had been smouldering in him all afternoon burst into flame. With a mighty repression he resisted the impulse to crush her to him, and handed her to the equilibrium which she instinctively sought, though the arm trembled which had been pressed about her. His heart sang, as he helped her into the machine, and sprang in beside her. He felt a savage joy in his strength as he started the car and felt the wheel under his hard grip. He was young, younger than he had ever been in his boyhood; strong, stronger than he had ever been in his youth. What worlds he might conquer now with this new blood racing through his veins. It was as if he had been suddenly thrust into the fires of eternal life, and endowed with all the vast, irresistible force of creation!