Page:Son of the wind.djvu/103

RV 91 he looked more dry, more lined, more than ever built of thoughts, without actions. His survey was straight before him at his dreaming daughter. Carron had never seen him look at any one so deliberately, so concentratedly or so long. This time there was a deal more than affection in his face; there was introspection, there was a philosophic smile.

When his eyes moved, they moved rapidly. They met the young man's with an interrogation, pointed, peculiar, unaware of itself, and the more unguarded because of that. "How is it? Well, what did you find out?" he seemed to demand. Carron felt suddenly limp. The significance of the question seized him before he could challenge it. For once he was captured and carried off his feet by another man's conviction. He received it as a fact, reflected upon him from the scholar's candid, inquisitive face. The duel of looks—"Can you mean it?" answering "Did she tell you?"—passed between them, across the distance, shifted, and with a common instinct merged into a direct regard of the girl. She sat above them, forgetful of the one, unaware of the other, looking over their heads at the invisible something she saw, far away from this time and place. She appeared an unfamiliar creature, suddenly of importance, of tremendous significance. "A woman!" he thought; and, with a mixed sense of amazement and incredulous delight repeated, "A woman, good Lord, a woman!"