Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/163

Rh "What is it?" Gault asked, in order to say something, noticing that the garment seemed heavy and difficult for her to handle.

"My father's coat—the one he wears every day," she answered. "I was mending it while he had his other one on. He gets fond of clothes, and it's next to impossible to get them away from him."

She turned the coat about every now and then, her needle assaulting it, and catching splinters of light as it darted in and out. Gault leaned back, watching her. She bent her face over the work as she sewed, presenting to his gaze the fine white parting down the middle of her head, and the close-growing threads of her hair, here and there transmuted into filaments of gold. There was an air of serenity, of quietness and peace, about her, that seemed to tell of an inner sense of happiness.

As he sat back staring at her, and wondering, with that breathless beating of his heart growing stronger, what he should say, she suddenly raised her head and, looking straight into his eyes, said:

"What are you thinking about?"

Her face, with the lamplight shining full on it, seemed to radiate a soft, pervasive content. She asked the question with the indescribable charm of glance and smile of the woman who knows that her lightest word gives pleasure.