“All that it needs,” mused the man whimsically and aloud, “is the music of Pan’s pipes—and perhaps a small chorus of dryads.”
Then he heard a laugh and, wheeling suddenly, discovered Glory Cappeze regarding him from the cap of a towering rock where, until he had reached this level, she had been hidden from view. Now she flushed shyly as the man strode over and confronted her.
“Do you still hate me?” he inquired.
“I reckon thet don’t make no master differ ter ye, does hit?” The musical voice was painfully diffident, and he remembered that she had always been shy with him except on that first meeting when the leaping anger in her eyes had burned away self-consciousness.
“You know,” he gravely reminded her, “when I first saw you, you were on the point of thrashing me. 97 You had me cowed and timid. Since then I’ve come to think of you as the shooting star.”
He paused, waiting for her to demand an elucidation of that somewhat obscure statement, but she said nothing. She only sat gazing over his head toward the horizon, and her cheeks were excitedly flushed from the delicate pink of apple bloom to the warmer color of peach blossom.
“Since you don’t ask what I mean,” he continued easily, “I shall tell you. I’ve been to your house perhaps four or five times. From afar, each time, I’ve seen a scrap of color. Sometimes it has been blue, sometimes red, but always it has vanished with the swiftness of a shooting star. It is a flash and it is gone. Sometimes from beyond a door I also hear a voice singing.”
He leaned his elbows on the rock at her feet and stood gazing into the eyes that would not meet his own, and still she favored him with no response. After a little silence the man altered his tone and spoke argumentatively:
“You forgave the dog, you know—why not the man?”
That question carried her thoughts back to the murdered quail and a gusty back-flash of resentment conquered her diffidence. Her sternness of tone and the thrushlike softness of her voice, mingled with the piquancy of paradox.