Page:The plastic age, (IA plasticage00mark).pdf/160

142 clearly outlined with color as a doll’s and as mobile as a fluttering leaf. She had wide blue eyes and hair that was truly golden. Strangely, she had not bobbed it but wore it bound into a shining coil around her head.

Hugh wrote a poem to her. It began thus:

Maiden with the clear blue eyes, Lady with the golden hair, Exquisite child, serenely wise, Sweetly tender, morning fair.

He wasn’t sure that it was a very good poem; there was something reminiscent about the first line, and he was dubious about “morning fair.” He had, however, studied German for a year in high school, and he guessed that if morgenschon was all right in German it was all right in English, too.

They rarely talked. Hugh was content to sit for hours with the delicate child nestling in his arm, her hand lying passive and cool in his. She made him feel very strong and protective. Nights, he dreamed of doing brave deeds for her, of saving her from terrible dangers. At first her vague, fleeting kisses thrilled him, but as the weeks went by and his passion grew, he found them strangely unsatisfying.

When she cuddled her lovely head in the hollow