cooked, Laramie stood on
the other side of the stove from his enemy's daughter, watching every
move. If Kate walked over to the cupboard, his eyes followed her
step--she walked with such decision and planted her heels so fast and
firm. If she turned from the stove to the table, his eyes devoured her
slenderness in amazement that one so delicately proportioned could so
crowd everything else out of his head. It seemed as if nothing before
had ever been shaped like her ankles--there was so little of them to
bear uncomplainingly even so slight a figure--and Kate was by no means
diminutive.

As the supper progressed, Laramie watched almost in awe the short-arm
jabs she gave the meat on the broiler. The cuffs of her shirtwaist,
half back to her elbows, revealed white arms tapering to wrists molded
like the ankles, and hands that his eyes fed on as a miser's feed on
gold. The blazing coals flushed her cheeks and when she looked up at
him to answer some foolish question her own eyes, flushed and softened
by the heat, took on an expression that stole all the strength he had
left. When she asked him how he liked it, he exclaimed, "Fine," and
Kate had to ask him whether he liked the steak well done or rare.

"Any way you like it," he stammered, "but lots of gravy."

As he watched her laugh at his efforts to help her by picking up the
hot platter, a sense of his own clumsiness and size and general
roughness overcame him. She was too far removed, he told himself, from
his kind to make it possible for her ever to like him.

The closer he got to her daintiness and spirit and laughter, the more
hopeless his wild dreams seemed. Whenever she asked if the steak were
cooked enough, he suggested--to prolong the pleasure of watching her
hands--that she give it one more turn. Every moment he saw something
new to admire. While she was attending to the meat he could look at
her hair and see where the sun had browned her pink throat and neck.
As the broiling drew near an end, almost a panic gripped Laramie. The
happiest moments of his life had been spent there at the stove. They
were slipping away. She was lifting the steak the last time from the
fire. He asked her to turn it once more.

"Why, look at it," she exclaimed, "it's burnt up now; hold the platter
closer."

It brought him closer in spirit than he had ever been to heaven, to
feel her elbow brush against his own, as she deftly landed the smoking
steak on the platter