Meantime, Doris Cleveland
began to loom bigger in his mind than this timber limit. He suffered a
vast impatience until he should see her again. He had touches, this
morning, of incredulous astonishment before the fact that he could
love and be loved. He felt once or twice that this promise of
happiness would prove an illusion, something he had dreamed, if he did
not soon verify it by sight and speech.
He was to call for her at two o'clock. They had planned to take a
Fourth Avenue car to the end of the line and walk thence past the
Jericho Club grounds and out a driveway that left the houses of the
town far behind, a road that went winding along the gentle curve of a
shore line where the Gulf swell whispered or thundered, according to
the weather.
Doris was a good walker. On the level road she kept step without
faltering or effort, holding Hollister's hand, not because she needed
it for guidance, but because it was her pleasure.
They came under a high wooded slope.
"Listen to the birds," she said, with a gentle pressure on his
fingers.
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