Slowly, reluctantly the girl raised her head.
Had they lived in the Age of Stone that meeting might have proved far more interesting for purposes of description. As it was, both being fairly conventional characters of the Twentieth Century, the affair was disappointingly commonplace.
“How do you do, Miss Hoyt?” he asked, smiling calmly and reaching a hand across the counter. And,――――
“Why, Mr. Parmley!” she replied, laying her own hand for an instant in his.
A close observer, and both you and I, patient reader, pride ourselves upon being such, would have noticed, perhaps, that in spite of the commonplace words and the unembarrassed manners, the man’s cheeks held an unaccustomed tinge of color and the girl’s face was more than ordinarily pale. And could we have enjoyed a physician’s privilege of examining the heart-action at that moment we would have straightened ourselves up with very knowing smiles.
“I’ve come,” he said, as the soft hand drew itself away from his, “to return a book. Is this the right place?”
“Thank you. I don’t know very much about libraries; I always avoid them as much as possible as being rather too exciting.” He took a small book from the pocket of his coat and laid it on the counter. “I’m afraid there’s a good deal to pay on it. It’s been out quite a while.”
A tinge of color came into her cheeks as she took the volume. It was a copy of “Love Sonnets from the Portuguese.”
“Oh, I’ll let you off,” she answered gayly. “We sometimes remit the fines when the excuse is good.”
“Thank you. My excuse is excellent. I only yesterday discovered the identity of the loaner.”
“Only yesterday?” she asked carelessly, but with quickening heart.
“To be exact, at about eight o’clock last evening.” He dropped his voice and leaned a little further across the barrier. “You see, Miss Hoyt, you fooled me very nicely.”
“Excuse me, Mr. Parmley, you fooled yourself. I told you――at least, I never said I was Laura Devereux.”
“No, you didn’t, but――I wonder why I was so certain you were! If I hadn’t been――――”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Hoyt, but will you please let me have Swinburne’s Poems?”
It was the solitary reader. The girl disappeared into the stack room, leaving the two men to a furtive and, on one part at least, amused examination of each other. The pale youth, however, showed no amusement; rather his look expressed suspicion and resentment. Ethan, unable longer to encounter that baleful glare without smiling, turned his head. Then the librarian came with the desired book.