Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/308

296 briefly. Gone were her eager interpolations and high spirits. Brainerd glanced quizzically at her from time to time.

"What have you and Daffy been quarrelling about?" he asked Kenneth, as they rode together to the upper tunnel.

"I haven't any idea, sir," replied Kenneth. "I wish I knew. I've been trying to find out, but I can't get a thing from her but statements that she's treating me just as she always has, and that there isn't a thing the matter, and giving me the wide-eyed stare. She must think I'm an imbecile!" he ended bitterly.

Brainerd laughed softly.

"I thought it might really be something." He began to whistle La donna e mobile.

But to Kenneth it was no laughing matter. Against the smooth sweetly smiling opposition of her denial that things were not as usual he beat in vain.

"I'd like to shake you!" he cried one day, goaded to the limit of endurance.

For the first time her pose was dropped. She faced him straight with flashing eyes.

"I'd like to see you try!" she replied.

They stared at each other with hate.

"Well, good-bye. When you come to your senses I hope you'll let me know," rejoined Kenneth, and he turned on his heel.

For two weeks he confined his presence at the Bungalow to purely business hours, and took conspicuous pains to avoid the house itself. On the few occasions when he happened to meet Daphne, he lifted his Stetson gravely, and was bowed to gravely in return. He was very unhappy and bewildered and hurt about it. Naturally it seemed to him without all reason. But naturally, too, it brought him to a tumultuous realization of his love. Heretofore it had flowed so smoothly in the comfortable channel of their everyday joyous, open-air companionship that he had not recognized it fully. Now he suffered all the doubts and fears, the longings and despairs, to dreams and far-off hopes of his condition.

And Daphne—hurt to the soul, sick with disappointment in human nature, proud, ashamed that her confidence and trust