Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/338

328 just outline. Was it he? Was it Nathan? This man? No. Yes. No.

"You don't know me!" he exclaimed.

"I don't think I do," said Reba, in a jerky dazed voice, still staring.

He took off his hat. "Now do you?" he inquired, smiling.

Her eyes swept the contour of his close-cropped head, bared forehead, sensitive temples.

"No, I don't think I do," she repeated again in the same queer little frightened voice.

She sought his eyes. They were bluish gray eyes. She had never been quite sure of their color till this moment. They always used to waver and slip away from her, but now Nathan's gaze was taut and steady like the muscles of his body.

"I don't understand," Reba murmured, and she could feel one of her knees, the left one, trembling ridiculously; "I don't understand."

Nathan tried to laugh. It wasn't very successful. She looked so troubled and perplexed, and he wanted so to lay bare his whole soul to her; tell her how hard he had worked to make himself desirable, ask her, straight out if he was desirable, if she wanted him; listen to the music of her "well done." He believed she was lovelier than the image of her he had been carrying about with him all these long years. He had never dared, she had never allowed him, to look straight into her eyes like that before. They were the soft, dark-brown shade of the deep secluded pools hidden away in the little winding brooks up in the woods where he used to fish for trout. They lured