Gray gathered the dog into his arms and strode swiftly out into the
sunshot, purple light of early evening.
"What a girl!" he muttered to himself. "What a girl! What a corking
specimen of her sex!"
Presently he came in sight of her, and the puppy scrambled violently
until set down. Then he bolted for Constance Leslie, and it was only
when the little thing leaped frantically upon her that she turned with a
soft, breathless little cry. And saw Gray coming toward her out of the
rose and golden sunset.
Neither spoke as he came up and looked into her brown eyes and saw the
traces of tears there still. The puppy leaped deliriously about them.
And for a long while her slim hands lay limply in his. He looked at the
ocean; she at the darkening forest.
And after a little while he drew the note from his pocket.
"I had written this when I found yours," he said. And he held it for her
while she read it, bending nearer in the dim, rosy light.
After she read it she took it from him gently, folded it, and slipped it
into the bosom of her gown.
Neither said anything. One of her hands still remained in his,
listlessly at first--then the fingers crisped as his other arm encircled
her.
They were both gazing vaguely at the ocean now. Presently they moved
slowly toward it through the fragrant dusk. Her hair, loosened a little,
brushed his sunburned cheek.
And around them gambolled the wise little dog, no longer apprehensive,
but unutterably content with what the God of all good little doggies had
so mercifully sent to him _in loco parentis_.
* * * * *
"That," said the novelist, "is another slice of fact which would never
do for fiction. Besides I once read a story somewhere or other about a
dog bringing two people together."
"The theme," I observed, "is thousands of years old."
"That's the trouble with all truth," nodded Duane. "It's old as Time
itself, and needs a new suit of clothes every time it is exhibited to
instruct people."
"What with new manners, new fashions, new dances, and the moral
levelling itself gradually to the level of the unmoral," said Stafford,
"nobody on the street would turn around to look at the naked truth in
these days."
"Truth must be fashionably gowned to attract," I admitted.
"We of the eccentric nobility understand that," said the little Countess
Athalie, glancing out of the window; and to me she added: "Lean over and
see whether they have stationed a policeman in front of the Princess
Zimbamzim's residence."