He was regretting that she had outdone him in observation, but she suddenly looked up and said:
“Oh, Glenn! What a beautiful voice you have!”
It was the first time she had ever called him Glenn, and it produced in him a wonderful sensation.
They had come to a little bench, and, sitting there, they could only look at each other and smile. Marley noticed that a little line of freckles ran up over the bridge of Lavinia’s nose. They were very beautiful, he thought, and yet he had never heard of freckles as one of the elements of a woman’s beauty. Then he leaned back and looked about the yard.
He had always thought of it as it seemed that first night, enormous, enchanted, with wide terraces and fountains, and white statues gleaming through the green shrubbery. But now he saw no terraces, no statuary, no fountains, and no wide lawns; nothing but a cramped little yard crowded with bushes and trees, and surrounded by a weathered fence that had lost several pickets. He looked around behind the house where he had fancied long stables with big iron lamps over the doors, but now he saw nothing but an old woodshed and a barn on the rear end of the lot. The cracks in the barn were so wide that he could see the light of day between them as through a kinetoscope. He heard a horse stamping fretfully at the flies.
“It was here,” he said, “that I first saw you.” He did not speak his whole thought.
“Yes,” she answered. “I remember.”
“That was a wonderful night, the most wonderful of my life, except the one at the lake.”
He drew close to her. “I loved you at first sight,” he whispered.
“Did you?” She looked at him in reverence.