But that repression was just as
natural to him as emotional flare-ups are to some. Whatever he felt he
usually kept bottled up inside, no matter how it hurt. I never saw him
fly to pieces over anything. He was something of an anomaly to me, when
I first knew him. I was always so prone to do and say things according
to impulse that I thought him cold-blooded, a man without any particular
feeling except a certain pride in holding his own among his fellows.
But I revised my opinion when I came to know him better. Under the
surface he was sensitive as a girl; one could wound him with a word or a
look. Paradoxically, he was absolutely cold-blooded toward a declared
enemy. He would fight fair, but without mercy. Side by side with the
sensitive soul of him, and hidden always under an impassive mask of
self-control, lay the battling spirit, an indomitable fighting streak;
it cropped out in a cool, calculating manner of taking desperate chances
when the sleeping devil in him was roused. He would sidestep
trouble--and one met the weeping damsel at many turns of the road in
those raw days--if he could do it without loss of self-respect; but the
man who stirred him up needlessly, or crowded him into retaliation,
always regretted it--when he had time to indulge in vain regrets.
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