Had they lived in the Age of Stone that meeting might have proved far more interesting for purposes of description. As it was, both being fairly conventional characters of the Twentieth Century, the affair was disappointingly commonplace. “How do you do, Miss Hoyt?” he asked, smiling calmly and reaching a hand across the counter. And,——
Cicely Hoyt
“Why, Mr. Parmley!” she replied, laying her own hand for an instant in his.
A close observer, and both you and I, patient reader, pride ourselves upon being such, would have noticed, perhaps, that in spite of the commonplace words and the unembarrassed[200] manners, the man’s cheeks held an unaccustomed tinge of color and the girl’s face was more than ordinarily pale. And could we have enjoyed a physician’s privilege of examining the heart-action at that moment we would have straightened ourselves up with very knowing smiles.
“I’ve come,” he said, as the soft hand drew itself away from his, “to return a book. Is this the right place?”
“Yes,” she replied brightly.
“Thank you. I don’t know very much about libraries; I always avoid them as much as possible as being rather too exciting.” He took a small book from the pocket of his coat and laid it on the counter. “I’m afraid there’s a good deal to pay on it. It’s been out quite a while.”
A tinge of color came into her[201] cheeks as she took the volume. It was a copy of “Love Sonnets from the Portuguese.”
“Oh, I’ll let you off,” she answered gayly. “We sometimes remit the fines when the excuse is good.”
“Thank you. My excuse is excellent. I only yesterday discovered the identity of the loaner.”
“Only yesterday?” she asked carelessly, but with quickening heart.
“To be exact, at about eight o’clock last evening.” He dropped his voice and leaned a little further across the barrier. “You see, Miss Hoyt, you fooled me very nicely.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Parmley, you fooled yourself. I told you—at least, I never said I was Laura Devereux.”
“No, you didn’t, but—I wonder why I was so certain you were! If I hadn’t been——”
[202]
“I beg your pardon, Miss Hoyt, but will you please let me have Swinburne’s Poems?”
It was the solitary reader. The girl disappeared into the stack room, leaving the two men to a furtive and, on one part at least, amused examination of each other. The pale youth, however, showed no amusement; rather his look expressed suspicion and resentment. Ethan, unable longer to encounter that baleful glare without smiling, turned his head. Then the librarian came with the desired book.
“Thank you, Miss Hoyt!” said the reader. With a final glance of dawning enmity at Ethan he returned to his solitude. Ethan looked inquiringly at Cicely.
“He’s perfectly awful!” she replied despairingly. “He stays here hours and hours at a time. I don’t[203] believe he ever eats anything. And he calls for books incessantly, from Plutarch’s Lives to—to Swinburne! I think he is trying to read right through the catalogue. And a while ago he came for—what do you think?—The Anatomy of Melancholy!”
Ethan smiled gently.
“I wouldn’t be too hard on him,” he said. “The poor devil is head-over-heels in love with you.”
The phrase brought recollections—and a blush.
“Nonsense! He’s just a boy!” she answered.
“Boys sometimes feel pretty deeply—for the while,” he replied. “And judging from his present line of reading, I’d say that the while hasn’t passed yet.”
“It’s so silly and tiresome!” she said. “He gets terribly on my[204] nerves. He—he sighs—in the most heartbreaking way!” She laughed a little nervously. Then a moment of silence followed.
“Clytie,” he began,—“I am going to call you that to-day, for I haven’t got used to thinking of you as Cicely yet—do you know why I came?”
“To return the book,” she answered smilingly.
“No, not altogether. I came to ask you something.”
“I ought to feel flattered, oughtn’t I? It’s quite a ways here from Providence, isn’t it?”
“Supposing we don’t pretend,” he answered gravely. “We’ve gone too far to make that possible, don’t you think? And I’ve had a beast of a summer,” he added inconsequently. “I thought—do you know what I thought, dear?”
[205]
“How should I?” she asked weakly.
“I thought you were Laura Devereux, and that day when you didn’t come I went for you and saw you and Vincent on the porch. And afterwards he told me he was engaged to Miss Devereux, and—don’t you see what it meant to me? And yesterday I found out, quite by accident, and—” he reached across and seized her hand with a little laugh of sheer happiness—“I haven’t slept a wink since! I—I thought I’d never get here; the roads were quagmires!”
“Oh, why did you come?” she asked miserably.
“Why? Good Heaven, don’t you know, girl?” He leaned across and she felt his lips on the hand still clasped in his.
“Yes, yes, I know,” she cried.[206] “But—you mustn’t love me! You won’t when I’ve told you!”
“Try me!” he said softly.
“I’m going to. But—I can’t if you have my hand.”
“If I let it go may I have it again?” he asked playfully.
“You won’t want it,” was the grim answer. “When you know what I am really, you—won’t want—ever to see me—again.”
“That’s nonsense,” he answered stoutly. But a qualm of uneasiness oppressed him.
She moved away from the counter until she was out of reach of his impatient hands.
Cicely
“I meant you to fall in love with me,” she said evenly, looking at him with wide eyes and white face. “I meant you............