Even the
unintelligent know better than to throw a lighted match into a keg of
gunpowder.
Ford leaned backward against the push of the storm and was swept up to
the hotel. He could not remember when he had felt so completely baffled;
the incident of the girl and the ceremony was growing to something very
like a calamity, and the mystery which surrounded it began to fret him
intolerably; and the very unusualness of a trouble he could not settle
with his fists whipped his temper to the point of explosion. He caught
himself wavering, nevertheless, before the wind-swept porch of the hotel
"office." That, too, was strange. Ford was not wont to hesitate before
entering a saloon; more often he hesitated about leaving.
"What's the matter with me, anyway?" he questioned himself impatiently.
"I'm acting like I hadn't a right to go in and take a drink when I feel
like it! If just a slight touch of matrimony acts like that with a man,
what can the real thing be like? I always heard it made a fool of a
fellow." To prove to himself that he was still untrammeled and at
liberty to follow his own desire, he stamped across the porch, threw
open the door, and entered with a certain defiance of manner.
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