And the girl sat there, without stirring, without glancing at him. Yet every curve of her little body, every eyelash, every soft breath she drew was calling him, was set upon "making" him. What could she do more to make herself, as Leslie called it, a magnet? Love and innocent longing filled her to the eyes, the tender fox-glove buds of lips that could have asked for nothing better. Even if this were the only time! Even if she never saw him again!
Wasn't he going to set the crown upon her wonderful dream of a summer night?
"No, look here," the boy remonstrated silently with something in himself; something that seemed to mock him. He lifted his fair head with a gleam of that pride that goes so often before a fall. "Dash it all——"
"He will!" the girl thought breathlessly. And with her thought she seemed to cast all of her heart into the spell....
And then, quite suddenly, something happened whereby that spell was snapped. Even as she thought "he will," he rose from his chair.
He took a step to the entrance of their arbour, his shoulders blotting out the glowing light.
"Listen," he said.
And Gwenna, rising too, listened, breathlessly, angrily. He would not—she had been cheated. What was it that had—interfered? Presently she heard it, she heard what she would have taken for the noise of another of the departing motors.
Through the clatter from the last galop it was like, yet unlike, the noise of a starting car. But there was in it an angrier note than that.
It is angry for want of any help but its own. A motor-car has solid earth against which to drive; a steamship has dense water. But the Machine that caused this noise was beating her metal thews against invisible air.