The Flaming Jewel

"Your father didn't expect me to do that," he said, smiling.

"I'm not afraid, as long as you're in the house," she said.

She looked up at him again, wistfully. Perhaps he was restless, bored, sitting there beside her half the day, and, already, half the night. Men of that kind -- active, nervous young men accustomed to the open, can't stand caging.

"I want you to go out and get some fresh air," she said. "It's a wonderful night. Go and walk a while. And -- if you feel like -- coming back to me----"

"Will you sleep?"

"No, I'll wait for you."

Her words were natural and direct, but in their simplicity there seemed a delicate sweetness that stirred him.

"I'll come back to you," he said.

Then, in his response, the girl in her turn became aware of something beside the simpler words -- a vague charm about them that faintly haunted her after he had gone away down the stairs.

That was the man she had once tried to kill! At the sudden and terrible recollection she shivered from curly head to bandaged feet. Then she trembled a little with the memory of his lips against her bruised hands -- bruised by handcuffs which he had fastened upon her.

She sat very, very still now, huddled on the bed's edge, scarcely breathing.

For the girl was beginning to dare formulate the deepest of any thoughts that had ever stirred her virgin mind and body.

If it was love, then it had come suddenly, and strangely. It had come on that day -- at the very moment when he flung her against the tree and handcuffed her -- that terrible instant -- if it were love.

Or -- what was it that so delicately overwhelmed her with pleasure in his presence, in his voice, in the light, firm sound of his spurred tread on the veranda below?

Friendship? A lonely passion for young and decent companionship? The clean youth of him in contrast to the mangy, surly louts who haunted Clinch's Dump, -- was that the appeal?

Listening there where she sat clasping the book, she heard his steady tread patrolling the veranda; caught the faint fragrance of his brier pipe in the still night air.

"I think -- I think it's -- love," she said under her breath. ... "But he couldn't ever think of me----" always listening to his spurred tread below.

After a while she placed both bandaged feet on the rug. It hurt her, but she stood up, walked to the open window. She wanted to look at him -- just a moment---By chance he looked up at that instant, and saw her pale face, like a flower in the starlight.