And Fat Joe's thin tenor was just drifting faintly off
down the hill--a mournful rendition of "Home, Sweet Home"--when the
girl stepped noiselessly forward and put a hand, feather-light, upon
the man's arm.
Again she felt the swift tensing of the flesh beneath; she fell back a
step before the startling abruptness with which Steve whirled. She
even threw up one small hand, as if to shield her face. And then, the
cloak falling open at her throat, a slender, swaying figure in blue and
shimmering white, she stood and flung a little laugh at him--a laugh a
little unsteady, a bit tinged with mockery, and as untroubled as the
spirit of youth itself.
"Is that the way you always prepare to greet your friends?" she asked.
The man just stood and stared at her--stared much as if he mistrusted
his own ears and eyes.
"Not all my friends," his slow voice drawled at last, but even the
words were tinged with doubt. "Not all my friends," he said.
And again he was conscious first of her slimness, her smallness. He
was aware of the insistent, impish suggestion of boyishness in tilted
head and poised body, before the rays that wavered over his shoulder
from the windows behind him disclosed the misty gladness of welcome in
her eyes, splashed now with points of light not so very unlike the
blurred star-points in the infinitely deep, purplish pool of the sky
above them.
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