PART II
THE TIME OF FLAME
CHAPTER VII
Peterson felt the dark shadow of Harboro immediately. He looked up into the gravely inquiring face above him, and then he gave voice to a new delight. “Hello!—Harboro!” He dropped Sylvia’s hand as if she no longer existed. An almost indefinable change of expression occurred in his ruddy, radiant face. It was as if his joy at seeing Sylvia had been that which we experience in the face of a beautiful illusion; and now, seeing Harboro, it was as if he stood in the presence of a cherished reality. He grasped Harboro’s hand and dragged him down from the step. “Old Harboro!” he exclaimed.
“You two appear to have met before,” remarked Harboro, looking with quiet inquiry from Sylvia to Peterson, and back to Sylvia.
“Yes, in San Antonio,” she explained. It had been in Eagle Pass, really, but she did not want Harboro to know.
The smile on Peterson’s face had become curiously fixed. “Yes, in San Antonio,” he echoed.