Part 32 (1/2)

She did like him. How it had grown, that first ”fascination,” born from a look! But----At last she seemed to find the words that summed it up.

”This is a big thing,” she said, gravely. ”It might be the biggest thing that's happened to me; but, Bird-boy, there's no hurry about it.”

”No hurry?” He seemed to think that ”hurry” was now the main point.

She shook her head. ”We don't have to settle anything about it, right here and right now. Now _do_ we?”

”Yes. _Yes!_” urged the boy.

”No,” denied the girl's wise young voice. ”See here; I'll be in London, and you will be there in a month. There's plenty of time. You'll come over then.... Then we can think of it.... Then maybe we'll talk of it again....”

”Oh, will we,” muttered Jack Awdas in a voice of utter expressionlessness. For the moment he was ready to say nothing more.

Silence fell between them.

Each full of thought, they ascended and descended the belt of softly-rolling dunes and came to where the sand had drifted half-way up the trunks of the growing pines.

Suddenly Golden gave a little exclamation. ”Oh, look; what's this?”

”What's what?” he asked, stopping beside her.

”I thought it was a cute little flower that was growing up the tree,”

said the girl with down-bent head, ”but look, it's sown on to a ribbon, and it's got itself wound way round the branch----”

She was disentangling the object that had taken her eye; a couple of lengths of ribbon, faded to white by the sea breeze and st.i.tched to a little padded square of satin, once mauve, now pale as the sand.

”What is it?” she wondered.

Half-absently Jack Awdas caught hold of the other ribbon as he looked at the thing.

And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the sachet of the Disturbing Charm that had hung about Mrs. Cartwright's neck just before she had plunged into the waters of Biscay Bay; the Charm that the wind had caught and whirled away across the sands until at last it had been in that pine branch from which a girl's hand unwound it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the sachet of the Disturbing Charm._ ]

”Something from a wreck?” mused Golden.

The Charm dangled between them.

He was scarcely thinking of what he was doing as he twisted that ribbon over his own fingers.

He was set, so that he would not have realized, now, that he had set before. This was a universe away from that. _She_ knew that, the other one.... She'd been kind.... It wasn't that she hadn't liked him, he believed. She _had_ begun to like him near her, she _had_ liked it when he said ”darling.” Ah, to think that he had ever wanted to say ”darling”

to any woman before! Here was his darling, and she must be made to see it, not later, not in London, but ”right here and now.”

As he twisted the ribbon, he spoke in the tone that had caused that other woman to shut her eyes; for it was the note of the mating call.

”I say, darling----”

Again the girl shook her head, but--was there now the least quiver of indecision in her gesture?

”I say, if n.o.body else has ever been allowed to call you that----”