Page:The leopard's spots - a romance of the white man's burden-1865-1900 (IA leopardsspotsrom00dixo).pdf/251

 looked up at the graceful pillars with their carved and fluted capitals. "Well, let it be so. Let me live life to its deepest depths and its highest reach. It is better to love and lose than never to love at all." And he walked into the cool hall with the ease and assurance of its master.

Sallie greeted him with the kindliest grace.

"I'm so glad you stayed to-day, Mr. Gaston. I should have been really chagrined to think I made so slight an impression on you that you could walk deliberately away on a pre-arranged schedule. I am not used to being treated so lightly."

He tried to make some answer to this half serious banter, but was so absorbed in just looking at her he said nothing.

She was dressed in a morning gown of a soft red material, trimmed with old cream lace. The material of a woman's dress had never interested him before. He knew calico from silk, but beyond that he never ventured an opinion. To colour alone he was responsive. This combination of red and creamy white, with the bodice cut low showing the lines of her beautiful white shoulders and the great mass of dark hair rising in graceful curves from her full round neck heightened her beauty to an extraordinary degree. As she walked, the clinging folds of her dress, outlining her queenly figure, seemed part of her very being and to be imbued with her soul. He was dazzled with the new revelation of her power over him.

"Have you no apology, sir, for pretending that you were going home this morning?" she said seating herself by his side.

"You didn't ask me to stay with fervour."

"It ought not to have been necessary."

"Didn't you really know I was not going?"