"
She grew more serious, studied him with thoughtful eyes. "Do you know,"
she said slowly, "I believe you. Compliments in Virginia are like
cherries, the trees are full of them; they're nice but worth--so much."
She measured an infinitesimal degree with a rosy nail against a finger.
"But I can see that yours are different. They almost hurt you, don't
they?"
He made no reply, struggling weakly against what, he perceived, was to
follow.
"You're like a song that to hear would draw a man about the world,"
said Elim Meikeljohn, pagan. "He would leave his sheep and byre, he'd
drop his duty and desert his old, and follow. I'm lost," he decided, in
a last perishing flicker of early teaching; and then he smiled
inexplicably at the wrath to come.
Rosemary Roselle grew more serious.
"But that's not a compliment at all," she discovered; "it's more, and
it makes me uncomfortable. Please stop!"
"About the world," echoed Elim, "and everything else forgotten."
"Please," she repeated, holding up a prohibitory palm.
"Rose petals," he said, regarding it. His madness increased. She
withdrew her hand and gazed at him with a small frown. She was sitting
upright, propped on her arms. Her mouth, with its slightly full under
lip, was elevated, and an outrageous desire possessed him. His
countenance slowly turned hotly red, and slowly a faint tide of color
stained Rosemary Roselle's cheeks. She looked away; Elim looked away.
He proceeded aft and learned that Bramant's Wharf lay only a few miles
ahead.
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