Page:GB Lancaster--law-bringer.djvu/168

166 "How like him. But—I hadn't thought—yes; there is that look of repression and of exaltation about him somewhere. As if he had overcome greatly. But I never thought you would have seen that."

Dick took the sketch, pushing it back into his pocket.

"Why not?" he asked very quietly.

Jennifer looked away to the reedy banks where the wild ducks splashed. A faint grey knot of shacks and' tepees stood against a wedge of dark pine-forest on the shore, and across the pure shining mauve of the river a canoe shot out, breaking level silver lines that ridged each wave from bank to bank. The "Hya—he-e-e-e" cry of the paddler came sharply, and Dick stooped.

"Why not?" he said, and Jennifer looked up, half-laughing.

"Why—I have thought you were too materialistic," she said.

Dick glanced at her. Then he set his lips together; drew a piece of millboard from a skin-case in his breast- pocket and put it into her hands. He watched her while she looked at it. In all warm, delicate tints it stood out; a carefully, tenderly, finished portrait of herself, as unlike the bold, crude sketches which he made of men as Jennifer herself was unlike them. The wistful lips were there and the brave half-dread in the eyes. Jennifer dropped it and hid her face. She felt as though this man had looked on her naked soul.

"Oh-h," she said.

The breeze swept the funnel-flag of bright wood-sparks across them. Dick brushed a gleam from Jennifer's shouler, feeling her wince.

"No one else has seen it," he said.

"But—you have," said Jennifer, and her words were stifled.

"I could not help that, Jennifer," he said.

The name drew her eyes up to his. And she knew what they said and what hers answered as a man knows numbly the sentence of death when it is read out to him: knows it as a thing outside his control or comprehension; as a thing which is. She sprang up wildly, pushing her hands out.