Page:Harold Titus--Timber.djvu/22

14 "But some!"

"Yes."

"Want to talk?"

"More than anything else."

She turned along the car tracks, reached a small foot for the accelerator and they leaped ahead.

"Now talk to me," she said.

"I'd rather just look at you."

She lifted her chin. "An unfair advantage! My eyes are on the road."

"So's your mind. When we're somewhere else, I'll talk."

She dropped one hand from the wheel to pat his knee swiftly and flashed a smile at him. Then she kept busy with driving, while Taylor took his unfair advantage. Marcia Murray was small and very trim. Her hair, even in the cold light of the arc under which they swept, was a glorious yellow. Luke had called her a wisp of goldenrod and John knew the old man had been half contemptuous; now the words came back to him and his throat contracted. She was just that; a stalk of goldenrod, fragile, slight, lovely. Her little features were sharp, eyes large and heavy-lashed. The silken legs stretching for clutch and brake were as gently moulded as her fine hands on the wheel.

They left town and swept along the paved drive through scattered yellow pines where the moonlight bathed the girl and made John's heart leap—She was so like a cameo! He could conjure all manner of delightful things to say of her—And then they slowed where the road swung to the right and she let the car roll from pavement to turf beneath great oaks that dripped moss with the