Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/310

300 kissed him once! Woman were not like men. They were shy, easily frightened creatures. They had to be persuaded, and gently led—especially a woman of Rebecca's type. She was like a lily. It had been foolish of him to attempt to burn a fire in the chalice of a lily!

Thus for a while the sailor made excuse for Reba's notes. He must be patient, he told himself, bide his time, have faith; and for a while he was patient, did bide his time, did have faith. But he possessed too keen an intuition not to be aware of the change in Rebecca's letters.

Of late, he had fallen into the way of re-reading a few of the letters she wrote just after their marriage and comparing them with a few of the last that she had written. The contrast was significant. In the early letters there had been something—some little reference, some little expression of kindly feeling toward him, to pin his faith on; but in the last one there was nothing he could pin anything on but doubts and misgivings. She never referred by any chance to their marriage in her later letters. She had jumped with eagerness at his suggestion that he postpone his return for a year. He hadn't meant to postpone it really. But evidently she didn't want him to come back. And now this disturbing silence! Oh, he didn't want to lose the sweetness out of his quest.

Every probe and inquiry from the innocent Mrs. Barton, which made clearer Rebecca's neglect of him, hurt Nathan. He wanted to close his eyes—his brain, too—to every evidence that might clinch the fast-growing conclusion that Rebecca wished to evade her marriage vows. So long as she had written