"Well, it doesn't matter," he said with a comforting smile as he came up
beside her on the rug. "They'll introduce us when they come. I'm Andrew
Sevier and the berries are yours, so what matter?"
"Oh," said Caroline Darrah in an awed voice, and as she spoke she raised
her head from the wood flowers and her eyes to his face, "oh, are you
really Andrew Sevier?"
"Yes, _really_," he answered with another smile and a slightly puzzled
expression in his own dark eyes.
"But I read everything I can find about you, and the papers say you are
ill in Panama. I've been so worried about you. I saw your play last week
in New York and I couldn't enjoy it for wondering how you were. I
wouldn't read your poem in this month's _Review_ because I was afraid you
were dead--and I didn't know it. I'm so relieved." With which astonishing
remark she drew a deep breath and laid her cheek against the field
bouquet.
"I am--that is I was smashed up in Panama until David came down and
brought me home. It was awfully good of you to--to know that I--that
I--" Andrew Sevier paused as mirth, wonder and gratitude spread in
confusion over his suntanned face.
"How did it happen? Was it very dreadful?" And again those distractingly
solicitous eyes, full of sympathetic anxiety, were raised to his. Andrew
shook himself mentally to see if it could possibly be a dream he was
having, and a little thrill shot through him at the reality of it all.
"Nothing interesting; end of a bridge collapsed and put a rib or two out
of commission," he managed to answer.
"I _knew_ it was something dreadful," said Caroline Darrah Brown as she
moved a step nearer him. "I was really unhappy about it and I wondered if
all the other people who read your poems and watch for them and--and love
them like I do, were worried, too. But I concluded that they would know
how to find out about you; only I didn't. I'm glad you are here safe and
that I know it."
The puzzled expression in Andrew Sevier's face deepened. Of course he had
become more or less accustomed to the interest which his work had caused
to be attached to his personality, and this was not the first time he had
had a stranger read the poet into the man on first sight. They had even
gone so far as to expect him to talk in blank verse he felt sure,
especially when his admirer had been a member of the opposite and fair
sex, but a thing like this had never happened to him before. It was, at
the least, disturbing to have a lovely woman rise out of the major's very
hearthstone and claim him as a familiar spirit with the exquisite
frankness of a child. It smacked of the wine of wizardry. He glanced at
her a moment and was on the point of making a tentative inquiry when the
major came into the room.