"N--no," he admitted, turning red. "Why?"
"People who take trout in nets are fined and imprisoned."
"Oh! But you _said_ you had a net."
"It wasn't a fish net."
He waited. She offered no further explanation. Sometimes she looked at
him, rather gravely, he thought; sometimes she looked at the stream.
There was not the slightest hint of embarrassment in her manner as she
stood there--a straight, tall, young thing, grey-eyed, red-lipped, slim,
with that fresh slender smoothness of youth; clad in grey wool, hatless,
thick burnished hair rippling into a heavy knot at the nape of the
whitest neck he had ever seen.
The stiller she stood, apparently wrapped in serious inward
contemplation, the stiller he remained, as though the spell of her serene
self-absorption consigned him to silence. Once he ventured, stealthily,
to smack a mosquito, but at the echoing whack there was, in her slowly
turned face, the calm surprise of a disturbed goddess; and he felt like
saying "excuse me."
"Do they bite you?" she asked, lifting her divine eyebrows a trifle.
"Bite me! Good heavens, don't they bite you? But I don't suppose they
dare----"
"What?"
"I didn't mean 'dare' exactly," he tried to explain, feeling his ears
turning a fiery red, and wondering why on earth he should have made such
a foolish remark.
"What _did_ you mean?"
"N--nothing. I don't know. I say things and--and sometimes," he added in
a burst of confidence, "they don't seem to _mean_ anything at all." To
himself he groaned through ground teeth: "What an ass I am. What on earth
is the matter with me?"
She considered him in silence, candidly; and redder and redder grew his
ears as he saw that she was quietly inspecting him from head to foot with
an interest perfectly unembarrassed, innocently intent upon her
inspection.
Then, having finished him down to his feet, she lifted her eyes, caught
his, looked a moment straight into them, then sighed a little.
"Do you know," she said, "I ought not to have come here again."
"Why?" he asked, astonished.
"There's no use in my telling you. There was no use in my coming. Oh, I
realise that perfectly well now. And I think I'd better go----"
She lingered a moment, glanced at the stream running gold in the
afternoon light, then turned away, bidding him good-bye in a low voice.
"Are you g-going?" he blurted out, not knowing exactly what he was
saying.
She moved on in silence. He looked after her. A perfectly illogical
feeling of despair overwhelmed him.
"For Heaven's sake, don't go away!" he said.
She moved on a pace, another, more slowly, hesitated, halted, leisurely
looked back over her shoulder.
"What did you say?" she asked.
"I said--I said--I said----" but he began to stammer fearfully and could
get no farther.
Perhaps she thought he was threatened with some kind of seizure; anyway,
something about him apparently interested her enough to slowly retrace
her steps.
"What is the matter, Mr. Sayre?" she asked.
"Why, _that's_ funny!" he said; "you know my name?"
"Yes, I know your name."
"Could--would--should--might----" he could get no farther.
"What?"
"M-might I--would it be--could you----"
"Are you trying to ask me what is _my_ name?"
"Yes," he said; "did you think I was reciting a lesson in grammar?"
Suddenly the rare smile played delicately along the edges of her upcurled
mouth.
"No," she said, "I knew you were embarrassed. It wasn't nice of me. But,"
and her face grew grave, "there is no use in my telling you my name."
"Why?"
"Because we shall not meet again."
"Won't you ever let me--give me a chance--because--you know,
somehow--seeing you yesterday--and to-day--this way----"
"Yes, I know what you mean."
"Do you?"
"Yes. _I_ came back, too," she said seriously.
A strange, inexplicable tingling pervaded him.
"You came--came----"
"Yes. I should not have done it, because I saw you perfectly plainly
yesterday. But--somehow I hoped--somehow----"
"What!"
"That there had been a mistake."
"You thought you knew me?"
"Oh, no. I knew perfectly well I had never before seen you. That made no
difference. It wasn't that. But I thought--hoped--I had made a mistake.
In fact," she said, with a slight effort, "I was dishonest with myself. I
knew all the time that it was useless. And as soon as I saw you with your
cap off----"
"W-what!" he faltered.
A slight blush, perfectly distinct in her creamy skin, grew, then waned.
"I am sorry," she said. "Of course, you do not understand what I am
saying; and I can not explain. . . . And I think I had--better--go."
"Please don't."
"That is an added reason for my going."
"What is?"
"Your saying 'please don't.'"
He looked at her, bewildered, and slowly passed his hand across his eyes.
"Somehow," he said, "this is all like magic to me. Here in the wilderness
I hear a stick crack----"
"I meant you to hear it. I could have moved without a sound."
"And, looking up, I see the most beautif--I see--you. Then I dream of
you."
"_Did_ you?"
"Every moment--between mosquitoes! And then to-day I returned, hoping."
She lost a trifle of her colour.
"Hoping--what?"
"T-t-to s-s-see you," he stammered.
"I _must_ go," she said under her breath, almost hurriedly; "this must
stop _now_!"
"Won't you--can't you--couldn't I----"
"No. No--no--no--Mr. Sayre."
He said: "I've simply got to see you again. I know what I'm
asking--saying--hoping--wishing--isn't usual--conventional--advisable,
b-b-but I can't help it."
Standing there facing him she slowly shook her head.
"There is no use," she said. "It is perfectly horrid of me to have come
back. I somehow was afraid--from the expression of your face
yesterday----"
"Afraid of what?"
She hesitated; then, lifting her grey eyes, fearlessly:
"Afraid that you might wish to see me again. . . . Because I felt the
same way."
"Do you mean," he cried, "that I--that you--that we--Oh, Lord! I'm not
eloquent, but every faltering, stuttering, stammering, fool of a word I
_do_ say means a million things----"
"Oh, I know it, Mr. Sayre. I know it. I have no business here; I _must_
not remain----"
"If you go, you know I'll do some absurd thing--like poking my head under
water and holding it there, or walking backward off that ledge. Do you
know--if you should suddenly go away now, and if that ended it----"
"Ended--what?"
"You know," he said.
She may have known, for she stood very still, with head lowered and
downcast eyes. As for Sayre, what common sense he possessed had gone. The
thrilling unreality of it all--the exquisite irrational, illogical
intoxication of the moment--her beauty--the mystery of her--and of the
still, sunlit woods, had made of them both, and the forest world around
them, an enchanted dream which he was living, every breath a rapture,
every heart-beat an excited summons from the occult.
"Mr. Sayre," she said, with an effort, "I shall not tell you my name; but
if you ever again should happen to think of me, think of my name as the
name of the girl in that poem which I heard you reciting yesterday."
"Amourette?"
"Yes. That was the name of the poem and of the girl. You may call me
Amourette--when you are thinking of me alone by yourself."
"Did you like that poem?"
"Why do you ask?"
"Because--I wrote it."
"You!" She lost a little of her colour.
"Yes," he said, "I wrote it--Amourette."
"Then--then I had better go away as fast as I can," she murmured.
With an enraptured smile verging perilously upon the infatuated, if not
fatuous, he repeated her name aloud; and she looked at him out of soft
grey eyes that seemed at once fascinated and distressed.
"Please let me go," she said.
He was not detaining her.
"Won't you?" she asked, pitifully.
"No, I won't," said William Sayre, suddenly invaded by an instinct that
he possessed authority in the matter. "We must talk this thing over."
"Oh, but there isn't any use--really, truly there isn't! Won't you
believe me?"
"No," he said as honestly as he could through the humming exaltation that
sang in him until, to himself, he sounded like a beehive.
There was a fallen log all over moss behind her.
"We ought to be seated to properly consider this matter," he said.
"I must not think of it! I must go instantly."
When they were seated, and he had nearly twisted his head off trying to
meet her downcast eyes, he resumed a normal and less parrot-like posture,
and folded his arms portentously.
"To begin," he said, "I came here fishing. I heard a stick crack----"
She looked up.
"_That_ was my fault. It was all my fault. I don't know how I ever came
to do it. I never did such a thing in my life. We merely heard that you
and Mr. Langdon were in the woods----"
"_Who_ heard?"
"We. Never mind the others. I'll say that _I_ heard you were here.
And--and I took my--my net and came to--to----"
"To what?"
"To--investigate."
"Investigate what? _Me_?"
"Y-yes. I can't explain. But I came, honestly, naturally, unsuspiciously.
And as soon as I saw you I was quite sure that you were not what--what
certain people wanted, even if you were the author of _Amourette_----"
[Illustration: "'To begin,' he said, 'I came here fishing.'"]
"_I_ was not what _you_ wanted?" he repeated, bewildered.
"I mean that--that you were not what--what _they_ required----"
"They? Who are _they_? And what, in Heaven's name, did 'they' require?"
"I don't want to tell you, Mr. Sayre. All I shall say is that I knew
immediately that they didn't want _you_, because you are not up to the
University standard. And you won't understand that. I ought to have gone
quietly away. . . . I don't know why I didn't. I was so interested in
listening to you recite, and in looking at you. I loved your poem,
_Amourette_. . . . And two hours slipped by----"
"You stood there in the bushes looking at _me_ for two hours, _and_
listening to my poem--and _liking_ it?"
"Yes, I did. . . . I don't know why. . . . And then, somehow, without any
apparent reason, I wanted you to see _me_ . . . without any apparent
reason . . . and so I stepped on a dry stick. . . . And to-day I came
back . . . without any apparent reason. . . . I don't know what on earth
has happened to make me--make me--forget----"
"Forget what?"
"Everything--except----"
"Except what?"
She looked up at him with clear grey eyes, a trifle daunted.
"Forget everything except that I--like you, Mr. Sayre."
He said: "That is the sweetest and most fearless thing a woman ever said.
I am absurdly happy over it."
She waited, looking down at her linked fingers.
"And," he said, "for the first time in all my life I have cared more for
what a woman has said to me than I care for anything on earth."
There was a good deal of the poet in William Sayre.
"Do you mean it?" she asked, tremulously.
"I mean more."
"I--I think you had better not say--more."
"Why?"
"Because of what I told you. There is no use in your--your finding
me--interesting."
"Are you married?" he asked, so guilelessly that she blushed and denied
it with haste.
His head was spinning in a sea of pink clouds. Harps were playing
somewhere; it may have been the breeze in the pines.
"Amourette," he repeated in a sort of divine daze.
"I am--going," she said, in a low voice.
"Do you desire to render me miserable for life?" he asked so seriously
that at first she scarcely realised what he had said. Then blush and
pallor came and went; she caught her breath, looked up at him,
beseechingly.
"Everything is wrong," she said in the ghost of a voice. "Things are
hurrying me--trying to drive me headlong. I must go. Let me go, now."
And she sat very still, and closed her eyes. A second later she opened
them.
"Why did you come?" she asked almost fiercely. "There was no use in it!
Why did you come into these woods for that foolish newspaper? By this
time the Associated Press, the police, and the families of the men you
are looking for have received letters from every one of the four missing
young men, saying that they are perfectly well and happy and expect to
return--after their honeymoons."
Flushed, excited, beautiful in her animation, she faced the astounded
young man who stared at her wildly through his eye-glasses.
After a while he managed to ask whether she wished him to believe that
these four young men had each eloped with their soul mates.
She bit her lip. "To be accurate," she said in a low voice, "somebody
eloped with each one of them."
"How? I don't understand!"
"I don't wish you to. . . . Good-bye."
"You mean," he demanded, incredulously, "that four girls ran away with
these four big, hulking young men?"
"Practically."
"That's ridiculous! Besides, it's impossible! Besides--women don't run
men off like cattle rustlers. Man is the active agent in elopements,
woman the passive agent."
She did not answer.
"Isn't she?"
She made no reply.
He said: "Amourette, shall I illustrate what I mean--with you as the
passive agent?"
The girl bent over a little, then with a sudden movement she dropped her
head in her hands. A moment later he saw a single tear fall between her
fingers.
He looked east, west, north, south, and finally up into the sky. Seeing
nobody, the silly expression left his otherwise interesting face; a
graver, gentler light grew in his eyes. And he put one arm around her
supple waist.
"Something is dreadfully wrong," he said; "all this must be
explained--our strange encounter, our speaking, our talking at cross
purposes, our candid interest in each other--the sudden, swift, unfeigned
friendship that was born the instant that our eyes encountered----"
"I know it. It _was_ born. Oh, I know it. I _know_ it, and I could not
help it--somehow--somehow----"
"It--it was almost like--like--love at first sight," he whispered.
"It was--something like it--I am afraid----"
"Do you think it _was_ love?"
"I don't know. . . . Do you?"
"I don't know. . . . You mustn't cry. Put your head down--here. You
mustn't be distressed."
"I am, dreadfully."
"You mustn't be."
"I can't help it--now."
"Could you help it if you--loved me?"
"Oh, no! Oh, no! It would distress me beyond measure to--to love you. Oh,
it must not be--it must not happen to me----"
"It is already happening to _me_."
"Don't let it! Don't let it happen to either of us! Please--please----"
"But--it _is_ happening all the while, Amourette."
She drew a swift, startled sigh.
"Is _that_ what it is that is happening to me, too, Mr. Sayre?"
"Yes. I think so."
"Oh, oh, _oh_!" she sobbed, hiding her face closer to his shoulder.
"Amourette! Darling! Dea----"
"L-listen. Because now I've got to tell you all about the disappearance
of those perfectly horrid young specimens of physical perfection. And
after that you will abhor me!"
"Abhor _you_! Dearest--dearest and most divine of women!"
"Wait!" she sobbed. "I've got myself and you into the most awful scrape
you ever dreamed of by falling in love with you at first sight!"
And she turned her face closer to his shoulder and slipped one desperate
little hand into his.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]