The young man hesitated. “I don’t think it is civil to leave you,” he said, clumsily, to the girl.
“It’s her own fault,” said the aunt. “You mustn’t be sorry for her.”
“She is quite right,” said the girl, calmly. “You must go in and see the pictures.”
The aunt went in and the young man followed without a word. He was embarrassed.
The girl turned to the rail again, and leaning on it gazed down into the water at the carp. She seemed contented to be alone, and to have the young man with her aunt. It surprised Caswell.
A few feet away he was sitting on the floor, with his eyes seemingly on the book in his lap. But the page was a blank. He was stealthily watching the movements of the girl. She had come like a message from a far country—a country, after all, his own—and to him the message was what the first smell of the June clover fields is to the city man when he goes back to the farm of his boyhood.
How long he sat in this way, Caswell could not have told, but suddenly he heard a muffled step on the balcony, and he knew that the youth was coming back. He knew, too, that the girl also had heard the step, for he saw the color deepen in the side of her cheek and throat and in her little ear. But she made no move.
“Simple one that I am,” he said to himself. “She knew that he would come.”
The youth made a noise as he took his shoes, and the girl turned.
“Where is auntie?” she asked.