Happening once
to have a volume of Keats in his pocket, he read some of it to
her, and while she could not understand, the music of the lines
fascinated her and she had him leave that with her, too. She never
tired hearing him tell of the places where he had been and the
people he knew and the music and plays he had heard and seen. And
when he told her that she, too, should see all those wonderful
things some day, her deep eyes took fire and she dropped her head
far back between her shoulders and looked long at the stars that
held but little more wonder for her than the world of which he
told. But each time he was there she grew noticeably shyer with
him and never once was the love-theme between them taken up in
open words. Hale was reluctant, if only because she was still such
a child, and if he took her hand or put his own on her wonderful
head or his arm around her as they stood in the garden under the
stars--he did it as to a child, though the leap in her eyes and
the quickening of his own heart told him the lie that he was
acting, rightly, to her and to himself. And no more now were there
any breaking-downs within her--there was only a calm faith that
staggered him and gave him an ever-mounting sense of his
responsibility for whatever might, through the part he had taken
in moulding her life, be in store for her.
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