Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Don-a-dreams.djvu/154

 She stood gazing. "How do you find such places?"

"I look for them."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

She reached for his arm to help her down. "Why are you always alone?"

When she was beside him in the grass, he replied: "Because you're not always with me."

She gave him her full face with a hesitating smile. "You would tire of me, if I were." And when he shook his head, tight-lipped, she cried: "Oh yes, you would! I tire myself even. Some days I just hate myself. Ask Helen Kimball if you wouldn't. You should see the way she looks at me sometimes when I'm talking at the table."

"I met her," he said; and at the thought of Helen Kimball—the stiff, the critical, in her posed assumption of superiority—he smiled tolerantly. "I met her the night I called with Conroy."

"What did you think of her?" (She remembered Miss Kimball's "Mr. Chopin.")

"I didn't think of her at all."

She understood, and she laughed. After a silence, she said: "I'd love to roll down this hill, wouldn't you?"

"It isn't as smooth as it looks—under the grass."

"Let's run."

She caught his sleeve gaily and started down the slope, with a constantly increasing speed which he saw at once she would be unable to check. "Don't!" he cried. "Not so fast!"—and tried to hold her back. She tripped and almost fell over a rock. He caught