"I started early," he went on, "but maybe you think I didn't have a great old time finding this place. You said in your note, Zura, it was the 'Misty Star' at the top of the hill. Before I reached here I thought it must be the last stopping-place in the Milky Way. Climbing up those steps was something awful."
Mr. Chalmers mopped his rosy brow, but later conversation proved his sensitiveness to feminine beauty quite overbalanced his physical exhaustion, as on the way many pretty girls peeped out from behind paper doors.
Page kept in the background, plainly arranging a mode of escape. He soon excused himself on the plea of work, saying as he left, "I'll drop in some time to-morrow for the book. You'll find it by then."
With the look of a disappointed child on her face, Jane called to her little attendants, went to her room and resumed her knitting.
The unbidden guest was gaiety itself, and there was no denying the genuine pleasure of the girl. As the night was warm and glorious, I suggested that Zura and her guest sit on the balcony.
I picked up a book and sat by my reading lamp, but my eyes saw no printed words. My mind was busy with other thoughts. I was a woman without experience and had never lived in the world of these two. But intuition is stronger than custom and longer than fashion. The standards I held for the boys and girls of my country were high and noble. Frankly I did not like the man's attention to Zura, the intimate companionship suggested by his actions, nor his unreserved manner. The girl had told us of their chance meeting on the steamer coming from Seattle. Any mention of his name on her part was so open, she spoke of him as just a good playfellow to help her to pass away the time, I could not believe her feelings involved. But, fearful tragedies can be fostered by loneliness and in Mr. Chalmers's easy familiarity with the lonely girl, there was something wanting; I could only name it chivalry. Yet, as their voices came to me, glad, happy, vibrant with the joys of youth and its interests, I thought perhaps I did not understand the ways of the young and their customs, because I had never known their delights. On and on the boy and girl talked, unheeding my presence and the fact that I could hear.
From out the open window I caught a glimpse of the radiant blue between the distant hills and the light of the great evening star as it flashed its eternal message to the sparkling waters below.
Zura saw it and called softly to her companion, "Hush, Pinkey! Look! Isn't that a bit of heaven?"
And he of the earth replied, "I am looking at you. That is all the heaven I want just now."
"You silly!" was the unvexed reproof.