as a half-grown boy is of a kiss. But he was living in it—scarcely knowing, too far gone in it to question his own feelings, or too much afraid of the depths he might discover. He followed her wayward course, thinking no woman had ever set her feet so lightly in the grass, or turned her head to look back with such a supple motion. Tamer of horses, orderer of men, captious dictator, he was caught in the crook of a little finger, the wave of a lock of hair, the curl of an eyelash. He saw her passing on soundless feet, from shadow to shadow, through light and light. She went most like a wild thing, with movements so poised and beautifully balanced, they gave no sense of bodily weight. To capture her on the edge of day, at the moment when the fiery path would stretch out to them!
It was not to happen then; nor at mid-day, ghostly with accumulated mist of heat, when all the business of the house separated them, and the steady, undiverted eye of Mrs. Rader glanced between them. Not until the afternoon was tiring, with the languors of the whole hot day in its lap, did he lure her out again and down to the old spring well. Here her parole came to an end, and they were no longer laughing as they had been at sunrise, but afraid of themselves and desperately in earnest.
"I thought we were to be friends—just friends, aren't we?" her cry sounded.
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