She was
about to sacrifice the delicate material, in her impatience, when
the young man stepped quietly to her side.
"Allow me. Perhaps I have more patience, even if I have less
time," he said, stooping down. Their ungloved hands touched.
Maruja stopped in her efforts and stood up. He continued until he
had freed the luckless flounce, conscious of the soft fire of her
eyes on his head and neck.
"There," he said, rising, and encountering her glance. As she did
not speak, he continued: "You are thinking, Miss Saltonstall, that
you have seen me before, are you not? Well--you HAVE; I asked you
the road to San Jose one morning when I was tramping by your
hedge."
"And as you probably were looking for something better--which you
seem to have found--you didn't care to listen to MY directions,"
said Maruja, quickly.
"I found a man--almost the only one who ever offered me a
gratuitous kindness--at whose grave I afterwards met you. I found
another man who befriended me here--where I meet you again."
She was beginning to be hysterically nervous lest any one should
return and find them together. She was conscious of a tingling of
vague shame. Yet she lingered. The strange fascination of his
half-savage melancholy, and a reproachfulness that seemed to
arraign her, with the rest of the world, at the bar of his vague
resentment, held the delicate fibres of her sensitive being as
cruelly and relentlessly as the thorns of the cactus had gripped
her silken lace.
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