Page:The Black Cat November 1916.djvu/51

Rh life had it leaped before. With the tide of crimson that swept over her, swept also a tide of joy. He knew! He had known! The pursuit then had been the pursuit of life, the pursuit of man for woman! But within her was a strange constraint, perhaps a stupified happiness, or perhaps more; in any case, an influence she did not understand, but which restrained her.

"Girl!" he kept calling, up and down the shadow. For awhile she could not see him, but his voice came to her faintly. Again he passed near her hiding place. Soon his voice grew fainter and fainter—farther and farther away; then she heard it no more. Panic-stricken she sprang to her feet. She took two steps in the direction in which he had vanished, paused, then went on hastily.

"Boy!" she called. "Where are you? I'm here. I was hiding. Boy, where are you?"

Presently she saw him leaning on the iron rail.

"Boy," she called, "were you calling me? Were you looking for me?"

When he heard her, his body straightened and the blonde head raised swiftly. He came toward her, both hands extended.

"Why did you hide? Why did you run away from me?" he asked, the serious light burning in his eyes made her aware that on his questions depended the continuation of the earth's revolution or the rising of tomorrow's sun.

"I—I didn't think you knew," she whispered, her profile toward him, her gaze directed at the far horizon which suddenly flared a hot red in an arc over the gas houses where a door had been opened on roaring fires.

"Knew what?" His earnestness amounted to a compelling force.

Either from an instinctive resistance to force or from that strange constraint that had laid its hand on her once before, she was silent, still looking away from him.

"You were afraid," he accused.

Slowly she nodded. "Yes, I—I was afraid to have you know."

"Know what? Please, don't torment me."

"That I am a woman."

"Lord, yes! I knew that!" He laughed queerly, his flashing eyes betraying repressed emotion. The gas house flamed again on the edge of the sky. In a moment she was crushed against his breast, breathless, but tumultuously happy. She heard him whisper something unintelligible, but somehow she knew what he was saying and put her face up to his without a thought as to the wonder of it.

"Little sweetheart," he murmured, "did you think I didn't know the minute I saw you? Did you think your working clothes could fool me?"

She smiled up into his face greatly comforted. "Then you didn't mean me when you said 'we men,' back there? You never thought I was a man?"

He pressed her closer. "Glory, no! You couldn't even fool a policeman."

"But," and she forced herself to say it, "I'm not an artist. I don't know the difference between a palette and a—an easel."

Then he laughed aloud, his seriousness lost. "I knew that, too,—away back there when the taxi stopped under a street lamp and I saw your smock. It's entirely too clean."