Part 61 (1/2)

Archibald glanced at her. ”Are you cold?”

”No, I love it.”

He was chilled to the bone, yet there she stood, warm with life, bright with beating blood----

”What a beastly lot of tumbling water,” he said with sudden overmastering irritation. ”Let's get away from it, Becky. Let's get away.”

Going back they took the road which led across the moor. The clear day gave to the low hills the Persian carpet coloring which Cope had despaired of painting. Becky, in her red cape, was almost lost against the brilliant background.

But she was not the only one who challenged nature. For as she and Archibald approached the outskirts of the town, they discerned, at some distance, at the top of a slight eminence, two figures--a man and a woman. The woman was dancing, with waving arms and flying feet.

The woman was dancing.

”She calls that dance 'Morning on the Moor,'” Cope told Becky; ”she has a lot of them--'The Spirit of the Storm,' 'The Wraith of the Fog.'”

”Do you know her?”

”No. But Tristram says she dances every morning. She is getting ready for an act in one of the big musical shows.”

The man sat on the ground and watched the woman dance. Her primrose cape was across his knee. He was a big man and wore a cap. Becky, surveying him from afar, saw nothing to command closer scrutiny. Yet had she known, she might have found him worthy of another look. For the man with the primrose cape was Dalton!

III

George Dalton, entering the little sitting-room of ”The Whistling Sally,”

had to bend his head. He was so s.h.i.+ning and splendid that he seemed to fill the empty s.p.a.ces. It seemed, indeed, to Becky, as if he were too s.h.i.+ning and splendid, as if he bulked too big, like a giant, top-heavy.

But she was not unmoved. He had been the radiant knight of her girlish dreams--some of the glamour still remained. Her cheeks were touched with pink as she greeted him.

He took both of her hands in his. ”Oh, you lovely, lovely little thing,”

he said, and stood looking down at her.

They were the words he had said to her in the music-room. They revived memories. Flus.h.i.+ng a deeper pink, she drew away from him. ”Why did you come?”

”I could not stay away.”

”How long have you been here?”

”Five days----”

”Please--sit down”--she indicated a chair on the other side of the hearth. She had seated herself in the Admiral's winged chair. It came up over her head, and she looked very slight and childish.

George, surveying the room, said, ”This is some contrast to Huntersfield.”

”Yes.”

”Do you like it?”

”Oh, yes. I have spent months here, you know, and Sally, who whistles out there in the yard, is an old friend of mine. I played with her as a child.”