"
"No," he said. "But when I see you, I forget everything. Do you
love me?"
"Why, I've never even seen you yet," she exclaimed with something
like a smile. "I only know you as two eyes over a tangle of hair
that I don't believe you ever either brush or comb. Do you know,
sometimes I am curious."
He took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the bench under
a tree near by. All his doubts and fears and suspicions he set far
from him, and remembered nothing save that she was the woman for
whom yearned all the depths of his soul as by pre-ordained decree.
And she, too, forgot all else save that she had met her man--her
man, to her strange, aloof, mysterious, but dominating all her life
as though by primal necessity.
When they parted, it was with an agreement to meet again that
evening, and in the twilight they spent a halcyon hour together,
saying little, feeling much.
It was only when at last she had left him that he remembered all
that had passed, that had happened, that he knew, suspected, dreaded,
all that he planned and intended and would be soon called upon to put
into action.
"She's made me mad," he said to himself, and for a long time he sat
there in the darkness, in the stillness of the evening, motionless
as the tree in whose shade he sat, plunged in the most profound and
strange reverie, from which presently his quick ear, alert and keen
even when his mind was deep in thought, caught the light and careful
sound of an approaching footstep.
Pages:
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175