It may have been the unusual ardor of his gaze that warmed her cheeks and brought her eyes back from the world outside. At any rate, she turned, flashing him a startled glance that caused his pulse to leap anew. Her eyes widened and a flush spread slowly upward to her hair, then her lids drooped, as if weighted by unwonted shyness, and rising silently, she went past him to the piano. Never before had she surprised that look in his eyes, and at the realization a wave of confusion surged over her. She strove to calm herself through her music, which shielded while it gave expression to her mood, and neither spoke as the evening shadows crept in upon them. But the girl's exaltation was short-lived; the thought came that Boyd's feeling was but transitory; he was not the sort to burn lasting incense before more than one shrine. Nevertheless, at this moment he was hers, and in the joy of that certainty she let the moments slip.
He stopped her at last, and they talked in the half-light, floating along together half dreamily, as if upon the bosom of some great current that bore them into strange regions which they dreaded yet longed to explore.
They heard a child crying somewhere in the rear of the house, and
Chakawana's voice soothing, then in a moment the Indian girl appeared
in the doorway saying something about going out with Constantine.
Cherry acquiesced half consciously, impatient of the intrusion.
For a long time they talked, so completely in concord that for the most part their voices were low and their sentences so incomplete that they would have sounded incoherent and foolish to other ears. They were roused finally by the appreciation that it had grown very late and a storm was brewing. Boyd rose, and going to the door, saw that the sky was deeply overcast, rendering the night as dark as in a far lower latitude.
"I've overstayed my welcome," he ventured, and smiled at her answering laugh.
With a trace of solicitude, she said:
"Wait! I'll get you a rain-coat," but he reached out a detaining hand.
In the darkness it encountered the bare flesh of her arm.
"Please don't! You'd have to strike a light to find it, and I don't want a light now."
He was standing on the steps, with her slightly above him, and so close that he heard her sharp-drawn breath.
"It has been a pleasant evening," she said, inanely.