Page:The Van Roon (IA thevanroon00snaiiala).pdf/313

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windmill opposite. "He isn't a Mathew, is he? I'm so glad, Miss June, you think that too, because with you to back me, I may be able to break it to Sir Arthur, that this isn't quite the place for him."

Divine humility! Mad confusion! Had she but felt a little stronger, a little less unhappy, she really could have shaken him.

"I mean the Hoodoo," she said woefully.

Her wild bird's heart went quick and high as she saw him turn casually and enfold That with a slow smile. "Right again," he said, his head a little to one side in pure connoisseurship, a trick she had learned to watch for. "I quite agree with you—the old fool swallows more than his share of this beautiful light."

June was not thinking of the beautiful light. She was trembling in spirit; but one of his nature could not be expected to know what demons from the abyss were invading her. "How I wish it was somewhere else."

His laugh of gay agreement was suddenly checked as he caught the look in her eyes and in the next instant he saw the old man lying dead at the foot of the Hoodoo.

It was like the passing of a cloud across the sun. Life for him, also, had found another notation in these terrible months. He had been through a hard school. Certain lines in his face were deeper and there were hollows under his eyes. Never again must he allow the ideal to run so far ahead of the real. Yet in this harsh moment the power of his nature kept him up.

He was able to pierce to the true reason for June's deadly pallor. It was not wholly due to the fact that she was still weak or that she had walked too far.