Page:Jackson Gregory--joyous trouble maker.djvu/104

88 Embry, sitting back loosely, drawing slowly at the cigar she had requested him to smoke, was richly content to ponder his own plans and watch her. And this morning there was reason enough why a leisurely man should be satisfied just to ride with her and look at her. Never more than at this moment had Beatrice Corliss appeared richly alive, glowingly feminine, unquestionably beautiful. A man, told that here was the mistress of the Corliss' millions, might ignore the information, swiftly grasping the essential fact of a radiant loveliness no less vivid than that of the colourful world about her, A warm flush lay in her cheeks, she breathed deeply, enjoying the sheer sense of physical existence, her eyes shone softly. Like the sap in poplar buds, so did the blood in her body stir restlessly; like the little lifting everywhere of bent twigs and blades of grass, shaking down dew drops, so were there vague thrills and responses within her. Not only was she awake in the early morning; she was awake with it, electrically living the moment to the full because she was for the once in tune with it. Something like a reflected flush came slowly into Joe Embry's cheeks as he watched her.

Into the semi-intimate relationship which had gradually grown up between them there had never been so much as the suggestion of love-making. Beatrice had known Joe Embry casually for four years, had come to see a very great deal of him recently. During last winter's months, two San Franciscans in New York, they had found much in common. It had appeared that he was interested in certain ventures in which she had put money and they had talked together more of