While he stood, he heard a faint
click of a snapping lock within the library and knew that John Woodbury
had entered the secret room.
In his own bedroom he undressed slowly and afterward stood for a long
time under the shower, rubbing himself down with the care of an athlete,
thumbing the soreness of the wild ride out of the lean, sinewy muscles,
for his was a made strength built up in the gymnasium and used on the
wrestling mat, the cinder path, and the football field. Drying himself
with a rough towel that whipped the pink into his skin, he looked down
over his corded, slender limbs, remembered the thick arms and Herculean
torso of John Woodbury, and wondered.
He sat on the edge of his bed, wrapped in a bathrobe, and pondered.
Stroke by stroke he built the picture of that dead mother, like a
painter who jots down the first sketch of a large composition. John
Woodbury, vast, blond, grey-eyed, had given him few of his physical
traits. But then he had often heard that the son usually resembled the
mother. She must have been dark, slender, a frail wife for such a giant;
but perhaps she had a strength of spirit which made her his mate.
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