Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/184

 array; but because it was crushed and crumpled, it was a sweeter, finer, more exciting beauty than before. The bouquet of it swirled his head like wine.

She was asleep—yes, her breast against his breast rose and fell rhythmically. No; the gates of her eyes were languidly ajar like one who slowly takes account of new environment. Suddenly their blue gaze was wide. The light in the eyes was of surprise and then a little bit of dismay and shock, almost of shame, and the face was somehow altered; the lips quivered and the exquisite cupid's bow line of them was broken a little.

Her lover breathed some soft ecstatic word to her. For that word she gave him back a pressure and buried her face for an instant. Thereafter their manner was of having discovered some delightful secret, each about the other, which a thousand delicacies forbade to mention, which their every move and glance and tone exulted in.

Henry led her back to her seat at the foot of the column and sank down beside her. Still breathing quickly as from the aftermath of a great emotion, he looked around him strangely.

It was the same world, the same rose garden, the same dancing blue inlet, the same far-flung panorama of greens with the white peak of Gregory pinning the sky in its place above.

But she—who had made this little local world so bright and real—she was changed. For this hour at least, the strong, the self-satisfied, the self-confident and managing Billie Boland was gone. In her place was a shy, impressed, clinging girl, who said little, who played with her lover's hands without ever looking at