Page:The Toll of the Bush.pdf/262

His mind in a whirl, the young man turned back into the office and closed the door, The instinct of disaster was upon him, though he would have found it difficult to define its exact origin. Less than half an hour ago he had seemed to read for the first time surrender in the girl’s eyes. Her voice had held a lingering tenderness. She had shown him that she understood the uncompleted ph, the questioning glance. Her eyes had allen in embarrassment; once they had dwelt on his for seconds, wherein his blood was tuned to music. There was a sweet homeliness in her manner, that self-revelation which is only for our nearest and dearest. And surely the thought of the coming night was in her mind as in his. The dances they were to have together; the talks, punctuated with tenser silences; the question he was to ask her. Then the dreamy delirium that followed her consent, for consent she would; in the intimacy of the morning he had read his answer in her eyes—the first love-kiss down on the sands, or in the scented garden; the times their eyes