She nodded slightly, without looking up.
“And yet you have been very–kind, and not–not annoyed or offended. Perhaps after all, you–you–oh, please turn around!”
But she did not turn, so he stepped around in front. Into her cheeks had come a sudden color, and in her eyes he saw the light that lifts a lover to the highest heaven.
It was Pat’s cry of joy and his impulsive and somewhat violent embrace of this lady 133that awakened the dog reposing by the door. Looking in the direction of the voice Solomon seemed to see but a single figure. This was a natural mistake. In another moment, however, he realized that extraordinary things were happening,–that these two distinct and separate beings with a single outline signified some momentous change in human life. Whether from an over-mastering sympathy, from envy, delicacy, or disgust, Solomon looked the other way. Then, thoughtfully, with drooping head, he walked slowly out and left the lovers to themselves.
134X
TRAPPING A QUAIL
Happy were the days that followed. Pats, uplifted with his own joy, became a lavish dispenser of cheerfulness and folly. Elinor, with unclouded eyes and a warmer color in her cheeks, seemed to have drifted into the Harbor of Serenity. Both were at peace with creation.
In pleasant weather they strolled among the pines, worked in the little garden behind the house, fished, played upon the beach, or explored the neighborhood. When it rained, which was seldom, they cleaned up the house, read books and old letters, ransacking trunks and drawers trying to discover the secret of the departed owner. But in vain. The departed owner had been careful to leave no clew to his identity 135or of his reason for abiding there. They did find, however, between the leaves of a book, a little chart of the point done by his own hand apparently, and beneath it was written
La Pointe de Lory.