Page:Arthur Stringer - Twin Tales.djvu/250

240 his small gesture of self-accusation in the darkness.

"It was dangerous," she admitted, more composedly than he had expected.

"What would happen if they knew?" he questioned, more conscious of her nearness than of the words he was uttering.

"I could never go back," she told him. The forlornness of her voice, for all its composure, brought a surge of pity through his body. There was, however, something faintly dismissive in her movement as she sat down on the rough seat. "I want to talk to you about the pictures," she said in a more resolute voice.

"But I'd much rather talk about you," he objected, and he waited, with his heart in his mouth, to see if she challenged that audacity.

"I've seen you only three times before to-night," she said, staring off through a break in the shrubbery where a stretch of the lake lay like moving quicksilver. "Well, a good deal can happen in that time," he argued, wondering where his courage had gone.