Then, stepping backward a pace or two, I unlaced my hunting shirt of doe-skin, drew it off, and, rolling it into a soft pillow, lay down, cradling my cheek among the thrums.
I do not know how long I lay there before I fell asleep from very weariness of the new and deep emotions, as strange to me as they were unwelcome.

The restlessness, the misgivings which, since I first had seen this maid, had subtly invaded me, now, grown stronger, assailed me with an apprehension I could neither put from me nor explain.

Nor was this vague fear for her alone; for, at moments, it seemed as though it were for myself I feared--fearing myself.
So far in my brief life, I had borne myself cleanly and upright, though the times were loose enough, God knows, and the master of Guy Park had read me no lesson or set me no example above the morals and the customs of his class and of the age.
It may have been pride--I know not what it was, that I could notice the doings of Sir John and of young Walter Butler and remain aloof, even indifferent.

Yet, this was so.

Never had a woman's beauty stirred me otherwise than blamelessly, never had I entertained any sentiment toward fashionable folly other than aversion and a kind of shamed contempt.
Nor had I been blind at Guy Park and Butlersbury and Tribes Hill, nor in Albany, either.