Page:Harold Macgrath--The girl in his house.djvu/74

 all about it day after to-morrow. What's he like?" Her gaze wandered toward the fire, and this gave him the opportunity he had been longing for—unembarrassedly to study her beauty in detail. Beauty always attracted him strongly; a sunset on the desert, a moonrise on the Taj Mahal, a sunrise on the Himalayas—all enchanted him. What hair! It was as fine as cobweb, thick and wavy, and colored like the heart of a ripe chestnut burr. He had seen cornflower sapphires less lovely than her eyes. Her skin had the faint iridescence of pearls. He brought up these comparisons with a jerk and a stiffening of the shoulders. Come, come; this would never do. Whether or not he had loved Clare Wendell, he had suffered mightily. He must not permit this girl's beauty to get into his blood.

"My father is one of the handsomest men in the world," she said; "tall and strong and brave. Sometimes in his letters—and I must read some of them to you—he gives me little glimpses of the hazards he finds in his path. I believe he is really a poet, for nobody but a poet could write as he