He had sometimes called her that in her babyhood, years ago, and he fancied there was a little softening shine, like a flurry of wind on gray water, in her eyes when she heard it now. But she gave no other sign.
“Is it the first time you have read it?” David asked, conventionally, wondering where his dear, confident companion of the January days had gone, and whether this new dignity and aloofness in Gabrielle were only a passing effect of sorrow, and of the displeasure his most ill-chosen words had given her, or whether he had dreamed that once she was ready to flash, to respond, to be affectionate with him.
“Oh, no!” she answered. “But I have to read it over now and then like ‘Cranford’ and ‘Adam Bede’ and ‘The Ring and the Book.’”
“A lot you get out of ‘The Ring and the Book!’” David teased, with a brotherly smile.
“I get what I can,” she answered, demurely, unprotesting, and with just a hint of her old easy fun with him. It was enough to turn his heart to water, and he formed within his confused mind a solemn resolution not to fail her again, not to offend, to watch this timid little seedling of returning confidence and friendship reverently and tenderly; to keep that at least, if he might have no more.
“But Anna’s is a sad story,” he said, looking at the book.
“Yes, but I like sad stories,” Gabrielle answered, thoughtfully.
“Love stories. Don’t all girls like love stories?”
“I don’t call this love,” Gabrielle objected, after a brief silence, when she had looked at the two words on the cover of the book until they spun and quivered before her eyes.
“Come now,” David offered, mildly, actually trembling lest some misstep on his part shatter the exquisite pleasure of this blue hour of summer, and the ripple and quiver of the sea against the big shady rocks, and the quiet beauty of the girl’s voice. “Don’t say that you think ‘Anna Karenina’ isn’t a love story!”