Page:Haworth's.djvu/285

Rh turned, and it seemed as if he found it impossible to remove them, even for a breath's time. Since his glance had first caught the pale blue of her dress he had not once looked away from it. All the morning, in the midst of the smoke and din of the workrooms, he had been thinking of the hours to come. The rest of the day lay before him. The weather was dazzling; the heat of summer was in the air; the garden was ablaze with flowers whose brightness seemed never to have been there before; there was here and there the drone of a bee, and now and again a stir of leaves. The day before had been of another color and so might the morrow be, but to-day left nothing to be believed in except its own sun and beauty.

When at last he was quite near her, he seemed for a little while to see nothing but the faint pale blue of her dress. He never forgot it afterward, and never remembered it without a sense of summer heat and languor. He could not have told what he said to her, or if he at first spoke at all. Soon she began to move down the path and he followed her,—simply followed her,—stopping when she stopped to break a flower from its stem.

It was as she bent forward once that she told him of what she had done.

"This morning," she said, "I went to see your mother."

"She told me so," he answered.

She broke the stem of the flower and stood upright, holding it in her hand.

"You do not ask me why I went."

"Why?" he asked.

Their eyes met, and she was silent for a moment. Then she said, with perfect deliberateness: