Langdon looked long and steadily. Presently he fished out a jeweller's glass, screwed it into his eye, and looked again.
"Do you think that's a human hand?"
"I do."
"It's a slim one a child's, or a young girl's."
"It is. She had be-u-tiful hands."
"Who?"
"That girl I saw last evening."
Langdon slowly turned and looked at Sayre.
"Well, what do you make of it?"
"Nothing yet except a million different little romances."
"Of course, you'd do that anyway. But what scientific inference do you draw? Here's a thing that looks like a hammock lying on the ground. One end seems to be lifted; perhaps that is a hand. Well, what about it?"
"I'm going to find out."
"How?"
"By fishing," said Sayre quietly, rising and picking up his rod.
"You're going back there in hopes of "
"In hopes."
After a silence Langdon said: "You say she was unusually pretty?"
"Unusually."
"Shall I go with you, William?"
"No," said Sayre coldly.
III
SAYRE had been fishing for some time with the usual result when the slightest rustle of foliage caught his ear. He looked up. She was standing directly behind him.
He got to his feet immediately and pulled off his cap. That was too bad; he was better looking with it on his head.
"I wondered whether you'd come again," he said, so simply and naturally that the girl, whose grey eyes had become intent on his scanty hair with a surprised and pained expression, looked directly into his smiling and agreeable face.
"Did you come to fish this pool?" he asked. "You are very welcome to. I can't catch anything."
"Why do you think that I am out fishing?" she asked in a curiously clear, still voice very sweet and young but a voice that seemed to grow out of the silence instead of to interrupt it.
"You are fishing, are you not? or at least you came here to fish last evening?" he said.
"Why do you think so?"
"You had a net."
He expected her to say that it was a hammock which she was trailing through the woods in search of two convenient saplings on which to hang it.
She said: "Yes, it was a net."
"Did my being here drive you away from your favourite pool?"
She looked at him candidly. "You are not a sportsman, are you?"
"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."
"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 "
"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."