The Adventures of a Modest Man

He fell to stroking the cat's fur, gazing the while into space with an absent eye that piqued her curiosity. For a year now he had acquired that trick of suddenly detaching himself from earth and gazing speculatively toward heaven, lost in a revery far from flattering to the ignored onlooker. And now he was doing it again under her very nose. What was he thinking about? He seemed, all at once, a thousand miles removed from her. Where were his thoughts? Touched in her amour propre, she quietly resumed the map of southern Florida; but even the rustle of the paper did not disturb his self-centred and provoking meditation. She looked at him, looked at the map, considered him again, and finally watched him. Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she thought him dangerously attractive. Surprised and interested, she regarded him in this new light, impersonally for the moment. So far away had he apparently drifted in his meditation that it seemed to her as though she were observing a stranger—a most interesting and most unusual young man. He turned and looked her straight in the eyes. Twenty-two, and her first season half over, and to be caught blushing like a school-girl! There was no constraint; her self-possession cooled her cheeks—and he was not looking at her, after all: he was looking through her, at something his fancy focused far, far beyond her. Never had she thought any man half as attractive as this old friend in a new light—this handsome, well-built, careless young fellow absorbed in thoughts which excluded her. No doubt he was so habituated to herself in all her moods that nothing except the friendliest indifference could ever—— To her consternation another tint of warm color slowly spread over neck and cheek. He rose at the same moment, dropped the cat back among the cushions, and smiling down at her, held out his hand. She took it, met his eyes with an effort; but what message she divined in them Heaven alone knows, for all at once her heart stood still and a strange thrill left her fingers nerveless in his hand.