Page:RidersOfSilences - Max Brand.djvu/222

216 "Unless you'll go with me, Dick?"

"I? Take you to Pierre?"

She did not speak to urge him, but in the silence her beauty pleaded for her.

He said: "Mary, how lovely you are. If I go I will have you for a few days—for a week at most, all to myself."

She shook her head. From the window behind her the sunset light flared in her hair, flooding it with red-gold against which her skin was marvelously delicate and white, and the eyes of the deepest blue.

"All the time that we are gone, you will never say things like this, Dick?"

"I suppose not. I should be near you, but terribly far away from your thoughts all the while. Still, you will be near. You will be very beautiful, Mary, riding up the trail through the pines, with all the scents of the evergreens blowing about you, and I—well, I must go back to a second childhood and play a game of suppose—"

"A game of what?"

"Of supposing that you are really mine, Mary, and riding out into the wilderness for my sake."

She stepped a little closer, peering into his face.

"No matter what you suppose, I'm sure you'll leave that part of it merely a game, Dick!"

He laughed suddenly, though the sound broke off as short and sharp as it began.

"Haven't I played a game all my life with the fair ladies? And have I anything to show for it except laughter? I'll go with you, Mary, if you'll let me."