She came right up and spoke to him—the pariah—the abhorred of many! His heart gave a thump and he could feel its hammering as his glowing eyes met the beautiful icy ones.
“How did you get rid of him?” he breathed hoarsely.
“Him?” said Miss Gwendoline Gerald, in a tone whose stillness should have warned Bob.
“That sledge-hammer man? That weight-putter? That Olympian village blacksmith, I mean? The fellow with the open honest face?”
“I don’t believe I understand,” observed the young lady, straight and proud as a wonderful princess in the moonlight. Bob gazed at her in rapture. Talk about the shoulders of that girl who had given him the cold shoulder at the dinner-table!—Miss Gwendoline’s shoulders were a thousand times superior; they would cause any sculptor to rave. Their plastic beauty was that of the purest marble in that pure light. And that pure, perfect face, likewise bathed in the celestial flood of light—until now, never had he quite realized what he had lost, in losing her.
“But never mind about explaining,” went on the vision, apropos of Bob’s Olympian, village-blacksmith remark. “I didn’t come to discuss generalities.”
“Of course not,” assented Bob eagerly.
The music from the house now sounded suspiciously like a trot. Miss Gerald saw, though indistinctly, a face look out of the door. It might have been the little dark thing peering around for Bob, for she was quite capable of doing that. Bob didn’t notice her—if it were she. He had eyes for but one. He was worshiping in that distant, eager, hungry, lost-soul kind of a way. Miss Gerald’s glance returned to Bob.
“Will you be so good as to take a turn or two about the garden with me?” she said in a calm, if hard and matter-of-fact tone. A number of people were now approaching from the other end of the broad, partially-enclosed space and Miss Gerald had observed them.