Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/366

 rounded him as he walked with Joan Royle to a remote and empty room. He could not possibly forget the past of his people, she thought; yet here he was alone with her, and his meaning was to ask her to marry him.

He did not know how to go about it. He did not do as Ket or Hoberg or any one else would have done. He stood, with his hat in his hand, and it was his one good hand, speaking to her; and she did not hear what he said for her watching his eyes. Sometimes she looked at his hair which was soft and brown, as she always had noticed, and now it was become amazingly tempting to her touch. She had never wanted to touch a man's forehead and hair; never Ket's and never Hoberg's; the idea, in contrast, repelled her; but she wanted to touch Calvin Clarke's hair; and still unsatisfied, and more so than before, was her need to feel his shoulder.

He was repeating something over which he was very serious; it was how he had taken her east with him, to his home, when he had gone away in November. He wanted her to believe this because he said part of him—"people call it the heart; my heart, Joan, must always have known what you were. . . . I came back to the court that night to see you. . . I went to the automat to see you. . . I've kept, I've kept . . ."

He dropped his hat and fumbled in an inner pocket for a folded bit of paper.

"See," he pleaded.

"What is it?" And as he fumbled with one hand to open it, she helped him. At his touch burning blood flowed in her fingers, and she saw that the paper was only a scrap upon which she had written a list of books for Ket beginning, "Barsoni, $3.50."

"Where'd you get that?" she asked.

"I kept it."

"Why?"