Blue-bird weather continued. Every day for a week Marche and Molly
Herold put out for Foam Island under summer skies, and with a soft wind
filling the sail; and in all the water-world there was no visible sign
of winter, save the dead reeds on muddy islands and the far and wintry
menace of the Atlantic crashing icily beyond the eastern dunes.
Few ducks and no geese or swans came to the blind. There was nothing
for them to do except to talk together or sit dozing in the sun. And,
imperceptibly, between them the elements of a pretty intimacy unfolded
like spring buds on unfamiliar branches; but what they might develop
into he did not know, and she had not even considered.
She had a quaint capacity for sleeping in the sunshine while he was away
on the island prowling hopefully after black ducks. And one morning,
when he returned to find her asleep at her post, a bunch of widgeon left
the stools right under her nose before he had a chance to shoot.
She did not awake. The sun fell warmly upon her, searching the
perfections of the childlike face and throat, gilding the palm of one
little, sun-tanned hand lying, partly open, on her knee. A spring-like
wind stirred a single strand of bright hair; lips slightly parted, she
lay there, face to the sky, and Marche thought that he had never looked
upon anything in all the world more pure and peaceful.
At noon the girl had not awakened. But something in John B. Marche had.
He looked in horrified surprise at the decoys, then looked at Molly
Herold; then he gazed in profound astonishment at Uncle Dudley, who made
a cryptic remark to the wife of his bosom, and then tipped upside down.
Marche examined the sky and water so carefully that he did not see them;
then, sideways, and with an increasing sensation of consternation, he
looked again at the sleeping girl.
His was not even a friendly gaze, now; there was more than dawning alarm
in it--an irritated curiosity which grew more intense as the seconds
throbbed out, absurdly timed by a most remarkable obligato from his
heart.
He gazed stonily upon this stranger into whose life he had drifted only
a week before, whose slumbers he felt that he was now unwarrantedly
invading with a mental presumption that scared him; and yet, as often as
he looked elsewhere, he looked back at her again, confused by the slowly
dawning recognition of a fascination which he was utterly powerless to
check or even control.
One thing was already certain; he wanted to know her, to learn from her
own lips intimately about herself, about her thoughts, her desires, her
tastes, her aspirations--even her slightest fancies.