Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/206

196 him as austere and a trifle pinched, held its undertones suggestive of still youthful vitalities, of unawakened ardencies. It was the lips, he decided, with the faintly rebellious lines about their warmth, which did the trick. But there was breeding in that face, and something even more than breeding; something which he could not quite decipher, but was content in the end to write down as intensity. This played the added trick of making her seem, to Conkling, like a child prematurely aged, vaguely silvered by the life about her, the same as her roadside sycamores had been silvered by dust. Yet as his quick gaze rested on the gravely innocent eyes and the rose-like cream and pink of the arm above the gauntlet-top he was again perplexed by a persistent sense of girlishness.

Those gravely non-committal eyes, however, were no longer even covertly observing him. The gloved hands were once more decorously busy among the grapevine tendrils. Conkling could see, by that austere preoccupation, that the grave-eyed