"Doing what?"
"That."
"Oh!—this?"
She put up her hand and untwisted the little tendril of brown hair that hung deliciously over her left ear.
"I always do that when I'm thinking."
He very nearly said, "Then, for God's sake, don't think."
But Phœbe was always thinking now. He had given her cause to think.
He began to hate the little brown curl that hung over her left ear, though it was anguish to him to hate anything that was Phœbe's. He looked out with nervous anxiety for the movement of her little white hand. He said to himself, "If she does it again, I can't come near her any more."
Yet he kept on coming; and was happy with her until Phœbe (poor, predestined little Phœbe) did it again. Gibson shuddered with the horror of the thing. He kept on saying to himself, "She's sweet, she's good, she's adorable. It isn't her fault. But I can't—I can't sit in the room with it."
And the next minute Phœbe would be so adorable that he would repent miserably of his brutality.