Not so with Freda. She had no cause to love men, but, by some strange
alchemy of her nature, her heart went out to women,--to women whom she
had less cause to love. And her heart went out to Flossie, even then
travelling the Long Trail and facing into the bitter North to meet a man
who might not wait for her. A shrinking, clinging sort of a girl, Freda
pictured her, with weak mouth and pretty pouting lips, blow-away
sun-kissed hair, and eyes full of the merry shallows and the lesser joys
of life. But she also pictured Flossie, face nose-strapped and frost-
rimed, stumbling wearily behind the dogs. Wherefore she smiled, dancing
one night, upon Floyd Vanderlip.
Few men are so constituted that they may receive the smile of Freda
unmoved; nor among them can Floyd Vanderlip be accounted. The grace he
had found with the model-woman had caused him to re-measure himself, and
by the favor in which he now stood with the Greek dancer he felt himself
doubly a man. There were unknown qualities and depths in him, evidently,
which they perceived. He did not know exactly what those qualities and
depths were, but he had a hazy idea that they were there somewhere, and
of them was bred a great pride in himself.
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