Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/100

 He shook his head blankly. "No. Was it you—following me?"

She nodded, breathless.

"Why didn't you call out?"

"I—I couldn't." She freed her hand from him and pressed it against her side, panting. "I was walking so fast, I couldn't. Why did you stop?"

He did not take his fascinated gaze from her to indicate the building; he jerked his head back at it, beginning to smile as a slow blush of pleasure burned up into his face. "Conroy told me"

"That I was coming?"

"Yes—to study music." His smile was for himself now as he saw the situation. "I came to see whether you were here yet."

"Really?" He had not changed, she thought; his face was a little older, a little thinner; but his smile was the same unguarded, boyish grin. She laughed, in a sudden release of her pent-up excitement, her amused scrutiny deepening to a frank regard of sympathy, as warm as a clasp of hands.

It brought his own ardour into his face, glowing and tender. "Yes," he said. "Really." And his voice shook on the word with a husky tremble.

She looked away from him in quick embarrassment, glancing around her at the frozen silence that held them in the heart of an immense calm. "Isn't—isn't it funny? Why is it so quiet?"

She wore a little sealskin cap set jauntily on the dark brown lustre of her hair, and under a wave of that—as she turned—he saw the rosy-tender