Clarence looked perplexed.
To break the silence that ensued, Claire crossed to the piano and began playing soft, dreamy fragments of melody.
Presently Olive took up the conversation, and when Madeline again turned her face toward him, he was listening to Olive and looking at Claire. It was the same look, yearning, tender.
Claire, all unconscious of his gaze, was looking at Madeline, as she played softly on.
As Olive and Clarence talked, Claire saw the face of the girl grow dark; she saw her eyes full of a hungry, despairing light, and gradually there crept upon her the remembrance that she had seen that same look, only not so woful, in the eyes of Clarence Vaughan; that same look fixed upon herself. Involuntarily her fingers slipped from the keys, and she turned from the instrument to encounter the same gaze fastened upon her now; ardent, tender, longing eyes they were, and her own fell before them.
Claire Keith was troubled. She wanted to be alone, to think. She murmured an excuse; her head ached; she would retire.
Clarence had noted an unusual brightness in her eye, and a feverish flush upon her cheek. Now, however, she was quite pale, and as she extended her hand to him with a strange, new sensation of diffidence and consciousness, he clasped it for a moment in his own, and said, earnestly: "You do not look at all well, Miss Keith; you are sure it is only a headache?"
"Quite sure," smiling faintly.
"Then good-night. I shall enquire after your head to-morrow."
"Thank you," she murmured.