Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/236

226 the picnic. Probably, she concluded, it had been rather a provincial proceeding of Nathan's to offer himself to her so quickly. Probably men of Dr. Booth's knowledge of the world were less precipitous with their proposals of marriage. When, however, two or three afternoons and evenings alone together had been passed, and still he had not spoken of marriage, Reba began searching for other causes for his silence. Was it, possibly, she wondered, because he was uncertain of her feelings for him?

She was sure that this was the explanation when, one afternoon, three or four weeks after the revelation on the rocks, he smiled down at her with a kind of hurt-boy, peevish sort of expression, and asked half seriously, half playfully, "Why are you so passive, Becky, still? What are you made of? Why don't you ever let yourself go? You let only your eyes tell me that you care a little?"

It was true, but it was only because she didn't know quite how to express herself. She reached out one of her hands, and placed it shyly, gently on his arm. He stared down at it, as if it had been a curious species of butterfly that had lit there.

"What a cool little first caress!" he exclaimed tauntingly. She flushed at that, but did not draw her hand away.

"You're so like the sun that you blind me—just at first," she told him, in way of explanation.

He took her hand at that and held it a moment in his. Then put it back in her lap again.

"I think," he said, "the sun must be careful not to burn such a shadow-grown little flower as you, Becky,"