Page:Caroline Lockhart--The full of the Moon.djvu/59

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THE FOREMAN OF THE L. X.
51

dale in antique fashions, and innumerable small boys dangling their thin legs from the window-sills made up the audience.

While Nan flashed occasional surreptitious glances at the foreman of the L.X. outfit, its manager in the seat behind her was studying her piquant profile with fascinated intentness.

He looked at her hair. The way it grew about her temples and close to her ears was adorable. In repose, her mouth was sensitive and soft and yielding; he noticed that, in a nervous trick she had of shutting her teeth hard upon her lower lip, the blood rushed back in a crimson flood as though it flowed swift and red in her veins.

She had an odd way, too, of suddenly throwing her head back with a little air of haughtiness and looking under her long lashes. There was something spirited in the mannerism which appealed mightily to that which was masterful in him. The speck of pepper in his hazel eyes dilated until it seemed almost a normal pupil.

The curtain of turkey-red calico which was stretched across the stage on wire and gave an air of mystery to the coming entertain-