I had never thought of such a thing before; it
would be wonderful, wonderful!"
No answer; but the warm colour had returned to the girl's face and her
eyes were bright.
"I think I envy you a little, your happiness," said Craig. Warmer and
warmer tinged the brown cheeks, but still the girl was silent.
"Yes, I'm sure I envy you," reiterated the man. "We always envy other
people the things we haven't ourselves; and I--" He checked himself
abruptly.
"Don't talk so," pleaded the girl. "It hurts me."
"But it's true."
Just a child of nature was Elizabeth Landor; passionate, sympathetic,
unsophisticated product of this sun-kissed land. Just this she was; and
another, this man with her, her cousin by courtesy, was sad. Inevitably
she responded, as a flower responds to the light, as a parent bird
responds to the call of a fledgling in distress.
"Maybe it's true now--you think it is," she halted; "but there'll be a
time--"
"No, I think not. I'm as the Lord made me." Craig laughed shortly,
unmusically. "It's merely my lot."
The girl hesitated, uncertain, at a loss for words. Distinctly for her
as though the brightness of the day had faded under a real shadow, it
altered now under the cloud of another's unhappiness. But one suggestion
presented itself; and innocently, instinctively as a mother comforts her
child, she drew nearer to the other in mute human sympathy.
The man did not move.
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