Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/39

 Yet, humorously, the real knock-out was that Miss Boland's appearance did not actually present that exquisite perfection which Henry Harrington's surprised eyes thought they saw. Men are always secing in women's faces things that are not there. Henry Harrington had begun to see such things in his second glance at Billie Boland.

"I may have been war-jaded, a cynic even—all those things Clayton called me," he was moved to flatter boldly, "when I talked to him this morning, but most certainly I am not now."

Miss Boland's smile brightened further and she began to view the young man with signs of more than passing interest.

"Henry is by way of being a struggling lawyer," bantered Charlie; but the gracious Miss Boland frowned at the banter. She seemed by now instinctively to have sensed in the lined face and deeply illumined eyes of Harrington that here was no twin of Charlie Clayton's to talk nothings to, but a man to be serious with and to whom it was worth revealing that she could be serious also.

"It is nice to struggle," she declared, gravely tactful, the violet blue eyes steady in their approving—approving, then searching. "You are ambitious, Mr. Harrington—or,"—she lifted her brows and smiled intimately—"you do not need to be?"

"Need to be! Yes, indeed, Miss Boland; if you imply an inquiry as to whether I am possessed of boundless wealth," Henry confessed honestly, strangely anxious to follow her exact mood. "But I am neither ambitious nor industrious, and I have not felt any great need to be since"