From the targets, over which he was now bending in feverish interest, she glanced up at him without being observed, her face somewhat puzzled. She felt extremely gratified that Jeb had made these perfect scores, and her spirit thrilled with his martial fervor; but, on the other hand, he had just been talking about a certain question which she had evaded two years ago by running away to take a hospital course in nursing, and it seemed to her that he was dismissing it rather abruptly. Yet she knew Jeb's temperament, as any girl will know a man with whom she has been a play-fellow since childhood; and, although hardly prepared for it just at this moment, she read aright that his love of self, his thirst for praise, had in no wise diminished. Had she been asked for a direct answer she could have told that his enthusiasm for target practice in the woods, where for hours he pretended to be shooting Germans, was vital to his abnormally active imagination; for Jeb, although a giant in strength and a god in grace, possessed the brow and eyes of an inveterate dreamer.
Formerly his dreams had run to adventure of a milder form, sometimes to verse, once or twice or thrice or more to love. He had, as a matter of fact, for short periods loved nearly all the girls in Hillsdale who were pretty enough, and clever enough; never becoming really serious—unless it was with her! But she had laughed at him then, sympathetically and sweetly, reminding him that they had grown up together, besides being each of them twenty-four.
Not that she believed these were serious obstacles, but at the time they served; for, if the strict truth be told, Marian understood Jeb too well to confess how much she cared. His exceptional charm, fascinating her beyond anything she had experienced, was, on the other hand, marred by his inordinate vanity. His extreme courtesy, urban manner and quick instinct for thoughtful attentions to old and young alike, she read truly as superficial, rather than sincere, kindnesses. The casual acquaintance would not have discovered this—but Marian had grown up with him! She could love him, she had more than a hundred times told herself—God, yes! Alone in the nights when his warm bronze coloring of perfect health seemed near to her, she had admitted this. Yet by day she laughed at it; and laughed at Jeb. Thereupon Jeb had settled down in earnest to win her.
Miss Sallie and Miss Veemie had watched through a prayer-glass the beginning of that ardent affair. From their lofty place of vantage twenty-four and twenty-four might not have been quite suitable, but years could stand for naught against the tower of mental strength and character with which they knew Marian to be possessed. They would gladly have greeted her as one of themselves, one to mother Jeb, to see that he was warmly clothed and did not eat imprudently. He had always been a child to them! Many times, in the bygone days, Miss Sallie would hint at this ideal mating, till at last the daughter of Amos Strong had wrapped the little woman in her arms, saying sweetly that she preferred something in life besides "mothering an overgrown, selfish boy."
It had cost her something to say this, for in her heart she was just beginning to know how adoringly she could be these things and more to him. As a child she mothered him; at ten he bullied her; in their 'teens she had bossed and mothered him again! Love him? She admitted it through tears to her mirror—and yet, withal, she had understood him just a shade too well!
Then came the day—as such days will—when she was cornered, pinioned, made captive!—when she could no longer fight, and knew that surrender was but a matter of hours. Much of that night (she remembered every minute of it now!) she had lain awake watching her heart and her level judgment wage their last battle; and the next afternoon, an hour before he was to come, she quietly left for Baltimore, or New York—or it may have been Chicago—to take the course in nursing.
Her eyes now swept him with tenderness as the memory of that day came rushing back, but a shadow of disappointment crossed them as she saw that he was still looking, fascinated, at the proof of his skill. Was her return, after an absence of two years, so meaningless that he could be engrossed by a few sheets of inert paper while she stood within touch of him?
"You shoot very well, Jeb," she said, casually.
"Don't I though!" he cried. "See, Marian—here's the five hundred!"
"I should think," she said, glancing at it indifferently, "that you'd join the regular army."