But he evidently had heard, for when he had removed the other shoe he said, "So you think I have a strange way about me at times, do you?"
He had seated himself on the bench beside her. Her head, neck, and shoulders in the red glow of the fire formed an exquisite picture. She had removed her hat, and her damp hair shone like a mass of bronze cobwebs. She was so dainty, so frail, so appealing! Not only had her young soul been torn to shreds, but the very elements had pounced upon her defenseless body. In her he saw the richest embodiment of a long line of patrician ancestors. How strange the whole situation! There she was storm-bound with a man whom the law held as no better than a felon, a nameless wanderer with no possibility of a respectable future ahead of him. She was silent, and he repeated what he had said.
"I don't mean anything wrong," she replied, smiling on him sweetly. "Now I suppose you will order me to take off my stockings. I don't have to, for they are drying as they are. See!"
She had put her small feet out to the fire. Her whole form was veiled in the rising vapor. It seemed to him to be a mist of enchantment out of which her eyes shone and her voice came like inexplicable music. An exquisite fancy held him in its grasp. His life and hers were but of a night's duration. They were besieged in an impenetrable forest by wild beasts, the prey of elemental forces. For the moment she was his, all his own. Frazier, her family, conventions, his own misfortune, would ultimately part them, but now in his ecstatic vision she was his, and the world might end with the dawn, for aught he cared. But one thing he suddenly began to fear, and that was that thoughts of her brothers' trouble might again depress her. So he bent all his energies toward her entertainment. He told her of a trip to Europe he had made just after leaving college, filling his account with amusing anecdotes. Her eyes were bent on him with a stare of profound interest.
"How wonderful," she exclaimed, "to meet one who has been there so recently! It has always been like a dream of heaven to me. My mother went when she was a girl, and she used to tell us about it when we were children. There were some far-off cousins of hers living in London. The head of the house had a title. I don't remember what it was—my father knows. Strange to say, he is proud of it, as if it would help us now. I suppose—I suppose"—her voice shook and mellowed as it fell deeper into her throat—"that those people over there would not care to keep up with us, now that we are so poor and my brothers are—like they are. I have an idea that old English families are very particular when it comes to the violation of the law."
"Don't think of your brothers' trouble," he pleaded. "Let us try to have cheerful, hopeful thoughts."
"I am trying," she responded, but even while she was speaking her face and tone showed the futility of her effort. "Poor Martin!" she went on. "Do you know, somehow, I feel more for him than for Kensy. Kensy is rougher, harder, less sensitive, less imaginative. Martin has always been my baby of the two. He was sick once several years ago, and I waited on him, nursed him, and petted him nearly to death. This is terrible on him. He may be awake now in that cold, damp cave, and with those ghastly thoughts to keep him company. Oh, life is a tragedy, Mr. Brown! As a child, I thought it was an endless dream of beauty and joy, and I have waked to this—to this!"
He tried again to cheer her with his stories, but her sweet face held shadows which he could not banish. Now and then she would smile faintly, but he saw that she was forcing herself to do so.
Something he said about his school-days evoked a sudden question for which he was not prepared.
"You speak of your home, but you have not yet told me where it was," she said.