Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/136

126 repeated, as she reached with her free hand to restore the scarf which had slipped off her shoulder.

"It's not a bit good of me," he countered, almost harshly, as he put the scarf back where it belonged. And she would have been afraid of him, with that sudden black look in his eyes, if she hadn't remembered that Gerald Rhindelander West was a gentleman, a man of her own world and her own way of looking at things. And she rather liked that touch of camaraderie which was expressing itself in the unconsidered big-brothery weight of his hand on her unaverted shoulder.

"I feel so—so safe with you," she reassured him, with that misty look in her upraised eyes which can seem so much like a sigh made visible. And it was beginning to be a luxury, she felt, to find somebody she could feel that way with.

"Well, you're not!" he said in a voice that was almost a bark.

"Why do you mean I'm not?" she asked, perplexed, with a still more searching study of his face.