Page:That Royle Girl (Balmer).pdf/71

 "See those stars, please!" she said and pointed up; and she surprised him so that he almost obeyed, without thinking; but first he seized her arm and then asked, "What stars?"

"Those over there!" she answered, directing him to a patch a few hours high.

"What about them?" he inquired, keeping firm clasp of her.

"I made them in the sand to-night," she told him. "I'll show them to you in stones; you'll see." And she led him across the street to the beach where she proceeded cautiously, searching for her smoothed place in the sand.

He watched her and held to her, wondering what was her trick.

"Here!" she cried. "Here! See! There they are, those stars I showed you! 'These stones here! See! I sat here and smoothed the sand. I'd come home from the office and I wasn't sleepy so I came down here alone; and I sat here, where you see, making those stars in the sand."

Calvin saw the stones and, looking up at the stars, while still tightly grasping her, he discerned how truly she had set her constellation.

"What about them?" he asked.

"Do you suppose I sat here, smoothing sand and making stars while I was waiting for Ket to—murder?" she asked, and he felt in the muscles of her slender arm the swelling tension of her passion. "I came down here alone, I tell you. I came down here by myself without an idea of anything wrong to-night. I sat here and made those stars and, when I got up, I came by Adele's flat and I saw her in there with a man who was like Ket—Fred Ketlar, but wasn't! He wasn't, I tell you! So get after him! Let Ket go! He didn't do it. Another