He did not know that love thrilled in every tone of his voice, that passion barbed his words, winging them straight home to the girl's awakened heart. He did not know that—for her—love all at once shone out of his eyes, dazzlingly, blindingly, as a great wide door opens suddenly upon a chilly twilight, revealing all the alluring warmth, all the glowing flame of the home firelight within.
"Dear little one," he went on, blindly, with infinite tenderness, "the only work appointed for one like you is to make a paradise out of a home. A woman like you was created to be carried over life's rough places in a good man's strong arms. There is only one place in the world for you. Only one—only the warm, sweet corner of the household fire, safe behind the heads of children."
Doris was leaning toward him with her transparent face upturned, and he saw a sudden tender light tremble over its sweetness as dawning sunbeams run over rippling water, and—startled, fascinated, awed—he watched its deepening wonder, its growing radiance, its wondrous illumination, as the white curtain fell away from the lighted shrine of a spotless soul. There now followed an instant's tense waiting, with the girl's rose-red lips apart and a-quiver; with the starry darkness of her eyes softly aglow, as the evening star glows through the warm twilight; with her exquisite face sensitively alight, as the spring's tender new leaves stir, and dimple, and shimmer under a sudden shower of golden sunlight,—and then swiftly a shadow fell, as a wind-swept cloud covers the sun, sweeping all the quivering sunbeams out of sight.
Unexpectedly as a swallow darts downward, Doris bent to gather up the forgotten braid of long green grass. Lifting it with a queer little laugh, she held it out to him with a movement which was almost mocking and wholly unlike her gentle self. Her dark eyes, grown suddenly very bright, seemed actually to be laughing at him.
"Is this the kind of braids that the mermaids wear hanging down their backs?" she said, lightly. "No, I remember that their locks of seaweed flow loose, but I am sure that they are no greener than this."
He took the braid and stared at it unseeingly, as if it had been in truth some such marvel as a mermaid's hair. He did not see that she hardly knew what she was saying. In a crisis such as this it is nearly always the woman who first recovers herself, no matter how young and innocent she may be, nor how wise the man in the ways of the world. And Lynn Gordon was young, too, and far from being wise—almost as far as Doris Wendall was. He knew little of women; he had not had experience to teach him the subtlety of the simplest feminine creature; he had forgotten for the moment that even the dove is artful enough to lure danger away from her love secret.
He himself was agitated, confused, perplexed, and, most distinctly and painfully of all, he was wounded by a vague sense of injury—really hurt by a feeling that Doris had trifled with him, that she had not met his sincerity with the earnestness which he felt that he had a right to expect. He had spoken from his very heart; he had meant every word that he had said,—meant it as tenderly and as truly as the fondest, most faithful of elder brothers could speak to the most well-beloved of sisters. And yet Doris had turned from him carelessly, almost floutingly, with this light, meaningless talk about the mermaid's hair. In offended, wounded silence he gave the braided grass again into her hand, and she took it laughingly, and looked at it absently for a moment,—at this long, long, green, green grass springing from human dust,—and then she tossed it into the air so that the wind caught it, bore it a little way, and, tiring, softly laid it down on a tombstone, thus giving back its own to the dead.
Doris stood up, and the breeze bent the faded muslin about her slender young body in longer and more enchanting curves. She pointed, still smiling, to the purple clouds now pinnacling the west, and said that it was time to be going homeward. As they went down the grassy path which wound around the hillside, she talked quietly of indifferent things, much as she always did, somewhat less at random, perhaps, yet with all the accustomed gentleness and kindness and brightness and sweetness.
So that, although Lynn had little to say in response, his composure came back and his feeling of injury went away. By the time they had reached the silver poplars, dulled under the falling dusk, the chill had entirely passed, and happiness again warmed his honest heart. For such is the foolishness of love that knoweth not itself. For such a dull fellow is this giant Ambition, who must ever be vanquished by Love, the boy.