Page:Following darkness (IA followingdarknes00reid).pdf/53

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Following Darkness
45

other, blushing and incapable of finding a word. I should never have guessed they were even brother and sister, let alone twins, for in appearance they were utterly unlike. Katherine pleased me. She was fresh and bright and attractive; I even thought her beautiful, for there was something of the open air about her, something of nature. At any rate she gave me that impression; her beauty had a kind of grave simplicity; and, if I had been a poet, and had been describing her, all my similes would have been taken from nature, from open hill-sides, from the wind and the sky. As I sat down beside her, her clear, dark, very blue eyes rested on me frankly, and with that she suddenly set me puzzling over where I had seen her before, or whom she reminded me of. I kept glancing at her furtively, but, seen in profile, her face was no longer suggestive, and I decided I had made a mistake. She appeared to me friendly and candid and unaffected, but I doubted if she were clever. Her brother, on the other hand, probably was clever. I did not take to him, he was smaller than she, thin and brown and subtle; also he had a way of looking at you that made you want to ask him what it was he found amusing.

"Peter will be able to show you everything, and take you everywhere," Mrs. Carroll explained, comprehensively, and then Katherine asked me if I played golf.

I answered, "No," and felt ashamed. I went on to prove that it was not my fault, that my father had refused to allow me to join the club, but at that point I caught Gerald's eyes watching me with an expression of interest, and I suddenly blushed. "Do you play!" I asked him aggressively.

He seemed surprised. His glance just brushed mine and rested on a picture above my head. "No." he answered quietly.

"Gerald is studying music abroad," said Mrs. Carroll,