They danced, marched, countermarched, pirouetted, in a pink mist. And he told her in his courtly way, with his Southern fervor, how he had been captivated by the white plume, and the shoulder and arm, and the foot; how vainly he had tried to overtake her for at least a fleeting survey. He told her how keen his dismay was when she escaped him and fled north. He told her how he made a note of the number of her car. He did not tell her that he forgot it, and he did not dare to tell her that he was jealous of the unknown to whom she had hastened.
Persis could not but be pleased, though she tried to disguise her delight by saying:
"It must have been a shock to you when you saw what was really under this hat."
She had not meant to fish so outrageously for a compliment. She understood, too late, that her words gave him not only an excuse, but a compulsion to praise. Praise was not withheld.
"If you could only know how I—how you—how beautiful you—how—I wish you'd let me say it!"
"You've said it," she murmured. His confusion revealed an ardor too profound to be rebuked or resisted. She luxuriated in it, and rather sighed than smiled:
"I'm glad you like me."
It was a more girlish speech than she usually made. Unwittingly she crept a trifle closer to him, and breathed so deeply that he felt her bosom swell against him with a strangely gentle power. By immeasurably subtle degrees the barrier between them dissolved, or rather shifted until it surrounded them. They were no longer strangers. They were together within a magic inclosure.
He understood the new communion, and an impulse swept him to crush her against him. He fought it so hard that his arm quivered. She felt the battle in his muscles, and rejoiced in the duel of his two selves, both hers. She knew that she had a lover as well as a guardian in his heart.
She looked up to see what manner of man this was who had won so close to her soul in so brief a time. He looked down to see who she really was. Their eyes met and held, longer than ever before, met studiously and hospitably, as the eyes of two lonesome children that have become neighbors meet across a fence.