Page:Neith Boyce--The bond.djvu/294

292 you know, does take it out of one. There's nothing left but a kind of inept cheerfulness, a prosaic, suburban way of living. You're out of it, and you know it."

"How can you talk like that—admit you're beaten! I wouldn't do it, if I were a man. How do you know you can't get what you want? I daresay you didn't half try."

"Oh, I tried," he said, very quietly.

"Perhaps you can still get it."

"No, I can never get it."

"Well—there are other things in the world, surely? You"

"Yes, but there isn't much that I happen to want. … Just now I want nothing except to be allowed to look at you."

"And why look at me, pray?" said Teresa coolly.

"Because—well, because you are beautiful."

She looked away gravely into the depths of the forest. She did not like his last words. They showed suddenly a lighter attitude toward her than before. Her talk with him had been serious; he had not paid her compliments.

There was a change, too, in his manner, a touch of excitement about it. His simple friendliness was gone; gone, too, his quiet matter-of-fact English aspect, which had made her feel so safe. She saw suddenly the man as he had first impressed her—the stranger, of alien blood,