g
there of the impersonality his words had betrayed! It was a clear
message from a man to a woman--one of those messages that only very
strong-willed people who know what they want have the frankness,
perhaps the boldness, to send. Even an indifferent woman would have
been stirred to a knowledge of dangerous sweetness, and she knew that
she had never been quite indifferent to the personal magnetism of Dick
Saltire. As it was, she was shaken to the very soul of her. For a
moment, she had the curious illusion that she had never lived before,
never had been happy or unhappy, was safe at last in some sure, lovely
harbour from all the hurts of the world. It was strange in the midst
of everyday happenings, with the talk and clatter of a meal going on,
to be swept overwhelmingly away like that to a far place where only two
people dwelt--she and the man who looked at her. And before the
illusion was past, she had returned a message to him. She did not know
what was in her look, but she knew what was in her heart.

Almost immediately it was time to take the children and go. Mrs. van
Cannan delayed them for a moment, giving some directions for the
afternoon. If Christine could have seen herself with the children
clinging to her, she would have been surprised that she could appear so
beautiful. Her grace of carriage and well-bred face had always been
remarkable, but gone were disdain and weariness from her. She passed
out of the room without looking again at Dick Saltire, though he rose,
as always, to open the door for her.

An afternoon of such brazen heat followed that it was well to be within
the shelter of the shuttered house. But outside, in the turmoil of
dust and glare, the work of the farm went on as usual. Christine
pictured Saltire at his implacable task, serene in spite of dust and
blaze, with the quality of resolution in his every movement that
characterized him, the quality he had power to put into his eyes and
throw across a room to her. The remembrance of his glance sent her
pale, even now in the quiet house. Only a strong man, sure of himself
and with the courage of his wishes, would dare put such a message into
his eyes, would dare call boldly and silently to a woman that _she_ was
his _raison d'etre_, that, because of her, the dulness and monotony of
life had never bored him less, that he had found her, that she must
take of and give to him. She knew now that he had been telling her
these things