“Why, I’m not hurt,” she said gently, astonished at his solicitation. There was a strange lump in her throat brought by his kindness, which threatened tears. Just why should kindness from an unexpected quarter bring tears?
“I’m only a little shaken up,” she went on as she saw a real anxiety in his brown eyes, “and I don’t mind it in the least. I think it was rather fun, don’t you?”
A faint glimmer of a smile wavered over the corners of her mouth, and Gordon experienced a sudden desire to take her in his arms and kiss her. It was a strange new feeling. He had never had any such thought about Julia Bentley.
“Why, I—why, yes, I guess so, if you’re sure you’re not hurt.”
“Not a bit,” she said, and then, for some unexplained reason, they both began to laugh. After that they felt better.
“If your shoes are as full of these miserable cinders as mine are, they need emptying,” declared Gordon, shaking first one well-shod foot and then the other, and looking ruefully at the little velvet boots of the lady.
“Suppose you sit down”—he looked about for a seat, but the dewy grass was the only resting place visible. He pitched upon the suit-cases and improvised a chair. “Now, sit down and let me take them off for you.”
He knelt in the road at her feet as she obeyed, protesting that she could do it for herself. But he overruled her, and began clumsily to unbutton the tiny buttons, holding the timid little foot firmly, almost reverently, against his knee.
He drew the velvet shoe softly off, and, turning it upside down, shook out the intruding cinders, put a clumsy finger in to make sure they were all gone; then shyly, tenderly, passed his hand over the sole of the fine silk-stockinged foot that rested so lightly on his knee, to make sure no cinders clung to it. The sight and touch of that little foot stirred him deeply. He had never before been called upon to render service so intimate to any woman, and he did it now with half-averted gaze and the utmost respect in his manner. As he did it he tried to speak about the morning, the departing train, the annoying cinders, anything to make their unusual position seem natural and unstrained. He felt deeply embarrassed, the more so because of his own double part in this queer masquerade.
Celia sat watching him, strangely stirred. Her wonder over his kindness grew with each moment, and her prejudices almost dissolved. She could not understand it. There must be something more he wanted of her, for George Hayne had never been kind in the past unless he wanted something of her. She dreaded lest she should soon find it out. Yet he did not look like a man who was deceiving her. She drew a deep sigh. If only it were true, and he were good and kind, and had never written those awful letters! How good and dear it would be to be tenderly cared for this way! Her lips drooped at the corners, and her eyelids drooped in company with the sigh; then Gordon looked up in great distress.