Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/152

142 "Just listen to it rain!" Reba exclaimed. Anything to relieve the tension.

"Yes. I was listening to it," gravely he replied. "I was thinking how pretty it sounded, beating on our roof," he added, "with you and me snug inside here, alone."

He made a little motion toward her, but Reba stepped back quickly—alarmed, and suddenly defensive.

"I—I think we ought to go now."

"You needn't have been afraid."

"Oh, I wasn't. I wasn't. I—I only thought it was getting sort of late."

He gave her no other chance to reprove him. They met as usual on the following Monday and Thursday nights, for their two last séances within the dimmed interior of the Garden Theater. But he did not offer to touch Reba. She sat very straight and erect in her place beside him on those two last nights. Her elbow did not rest on the chair-arm between them, and both her feet were tucked away in the dark, out of all danger of collision. The fact was, the new definiteness of their relations had made her shy and self-conscious—had made them both shy and self-conscious.

But Nathaniel's cautiousness was not wholly due to lack of confidence, or shyness either. He was very anxious not to frighten the gentle creature who had entrusted herself to him. Where another man of less fine instincts, but more polish, might have failed, the uncouth sailor succeeded in never once arousing in Reba a frenzy of doubts and misgivings, which more arduous courting would surely have done, and sent her begging to withdraw from her promise.

And yet, the five short days of their engagement