Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/305

Rh Then he tore off the heels and dug out the remaining bristle of nails with his pocket-knife.

"That'll be better," said he cheerfully. Elizabeth put on the damp shoes. The evening dew lay heavy on the towing-path, and she hardly demurred at all to his fastening the laces. She was very tired.

Again he offered his arm; again she refused it.

Then, "Elizabeth, take my arm at once!" he said sharply.

She took it, and they had kept step for some fifty paces before she said—

"Then you knew all the time?"

"Am I blind or in my dotage? But you forbade me to meet you except as a stranger. I have an obedient nature."

They walked on in silence. He held her hand against his side strongly, but, as it seemed, without sentiment. He was merely helping a tired woman-stranger on a long road. But the road seemed easier to Elizabeth because her hand lay so close to him; she almost forgot how tired she was, and lost herself in dreams, and awoke, and taught herself to dream again, and wondered why everything should seem so different just