The figure in its simple summer dress was gracefully lissome. The features, chiseled to a pattern of high-bred delicacy, were yet instinct with strength. As Boone was the exponent of the hills of hardship, which had been the barriers the pioneers had to conquer, so, he thought, was she the flower of that nurture that had bloomed in the places of their victory.
Just now the violet eyes were brimming with grave thoughtfulness, like the shadow of a cloud upon living colour. When McCalloway looked at those eyes he recalled the water in the Blue Grotto, whose scrap of vividness transcends all the other high-keyed colour of Naples Bay—Naples Bay, which is itself a saturnalia of colour!
Without doubt his protégé had set his heart on a patrician—but at the moment there was more wistfulness than joyousness in her face, causing the subtle curvature of her lips to droop where so often a smile flashed its brightness.
"Anne," he slowly asked, "would it be impertinence for an old fellow to question that look of dream—almost of anxiety—that seems an alien expression on your face?"
The preoccupation vanished, and she turned her smile upon him.
"Was I looking as dismal as all that?" she demanded. "I guess it was the unaccustomed strain of thinking."
"You remind me," he went on thoughtfully, "of a woman I once thought—and I have never changed my mind—the most charming in Europe. Of course that means no more nor less than that I loved her."
Anne flushed at the compliment and, quickly searching the gray eyes for a quizzical twinkle, found them entirely grave.
"How do I remind you of her, Mr. McCalloway?" The question was put gently.
"I've been asking myself that question, and an exact answer eludes me." He paused a moment, then went soberly on: "Your hair is a disputed frontier, where brown and gold contend for dominion, and hers is midnight black. Your eyes are violet and hers are dark, flecked, in certain lights, with amber. Your colour is that of an old-fashioned rose garden—and hers that of a poppy field."