looked back at her again, confused by the slowly dawning recognition of a fascination which he was utterly powerless to check or even control.

One thing was already certain; he wanted to know her, to learn from her own lips intimately about herself, about[Pg 74] her thoughts, her desires, her tastes, her aspirations—even her slightest fancies.

[Pg 74]

Absorbed, charmed by her quiet breathing, fascinated into immobility, he sat there gazing at her, trying to reconcile the steadily strengthening desire to know her with what he already knew of her—of this sleeping stranger, this shabby child of a poor man, dressed in the boots and shooting coat of that wretchedly poor man—his own superintendent, a sick man whom he had never even seen.

What manner of man could her father be—this man Herold—to have a child of this sort, this finely molded, fine-grained, delicate, exquisitely made[Pg 75]  girl, lying asleep here in a wind-stirred blind, with the Creator's own honest sun searching out and making triumphant a beauty such as his wise and city-worn eyes had never encountered, even under the mercies of softened candlelight.

[Pg 75]

An imbecile repetition of speech kept recurring and even stirring his lips, "She'd make them all look like thirty cents." And he colored painfully at the crudeness of his obsessing thoughts, angrily, after a moment, shaking them from him.

A cartridge rolled from the shelf and splashed into the pit water; the girl unclosed her gray eyes, met his gaze, smiled dreamily; then, flushing a little, sat up straight.

[Pg 76] "Fifteen widgeon went off when I returned to the blind," he said, unsmiling.

[Pg 76]

"I beg your pardon. I am—I am terribly sorry," she stammered, with a vivid blush of confusion.

But the first smile from her unclosing eyes had already done damage enough; the blush merely disorganized a little more what was already chaos in a young man's mind.

"Has—has anything else come in to the stools?" she asked timidly.

"No," he said, relenting.

But he was wrong. Something had come into the blind—a winged, fluttering thing, out of the empyrean—and even Uncle Dudley had not seen or heard it, and never a 

 Prev. P 24/44 next