“It’s all just silver or sable. There’s no middle tone,” Leigh said, looking at the sparkling moonbeams reflected on the face of the lake and the darkness of the shadowed surface beyond them.
“Isn’t there pink, or creamy, or something softer in those lilies right by the bank? I’m no artist, but that’s how it looks to a clod-hopper,” Thaine declared.
“You are an artist, or you wouldn’t catch that, where most anybody would see only steely white and dead black. It is the only color in this black and white woodsy place,” Leigh insisted, looking up at Thaine’s face in the shadow and down at her own white dress.
“There’s a bit of color in your cheeks,” Thaine said, 231 as he studied the girl’s fair countenance, all pink and white in the moonlight.
“Oh, not the pretty blooming roses like Jo Bennington has,” Leigh said, smiling frankly and folding her hands contentedly in her lap.
Thaine recalled the seat under the honeysuckle, and Jo Bennington’s pleading eyes, and bewitching beauty, and the touch of her hand on his arm, and her willingness to be kissed. He was flattered by it all, for Jo was the belle of the valley, and Thaine thought himself in love with her. He knew that the other boys, especially Todd Stewart, Jr., envied him. And yet in this quiet hour in the silent grove, with the waters shimmering below them, the gentle dignity of the sweet-faced girl beside him, with her purity and simplicity wrapping her about, as the morning mists wrapped the far purple notches on the southwest horizon, gave to her presence there an influence he could not understand.
Thaine had never kissed any girl except Jo, had never cared enough for any other girl to think about it. But tonight there suddenly swept through his mind the thought of the joy that was waiting for some man to whom Leigh would give that privilege, and without any self-analysis (boys at nineteen analyze little) he began to hate the man who should come sometime to claim the privilege.
“Leigh, don’t you ever feel jealous of Jo?” He didn’t know why he asked the question.
Leigh gave a little laugh.
“Ought I?” she inquired, looking up. “She hasn’t anything I want.”