“Just because he couldn’t burn her picture?” “Because he came down here in that queer way and has stayed here ever since. Something happened to separate them.”
“If that is so I ought to be sorry, I suppose, but I can’t; it was a good thing for me; it kept me here, and gave me a chance to—get an education.”
“And we do need a doctor here,” she said, with unnecessary emphasis.
“If he hadn’t come, I’m afraid I should have been sent away when Mr. Wingate died, and then I shouldn’t ever have—met you.”
“Oh, you might have!” she declared, tossing her crowned head coquettishly.
She crumpled a cottonwood leaf in her fingers. With a boldness that gripped his throat he slipped his hand along the back of the arbor seat.
“And if—if I had never met you?”
“Then you wouldn’t have known me!”
“No, I suppose not; but, as you said, I might have; it seems to me that something would have drawn me to you, wherever you were.”
The hot color dyed her fair cheeks. Her brown eyes dropped and were veiled by their dark lashes. A strand of the brown hair blown in a tangle across the oval of her face, the delicate curve of the white throat, the yielding touch of her body as he pressed his extended arm close up against it, intoxicated his youthful senses.