his hair again, and he stood silent, head
lowered, like a guilty boy caught in his sins.

"But--good heavens!" she exclaimed with an uneasy little laugh, "there's
nothing to be ashamed of in it! I'm not laughing at you, Delancy; I am
thinking about it with--with a certain re--" She was going to say
regret, but she substituted "respect," and, rather surprised at her own
seriousness, she fell silent, her uncertain gaze continually reverting
to him.

She had never before noticed how tall and well-built he was, in spite of
the awkwardness with which he moved--a great, big powerful machine,
continually checked and halted, as though by some fear that his own
power might break loose and smash things. That seemed to be the root of
his awkwardness--unskilful self-control--a vague consciousness of the
latent strength of limb and body and will, which habit alone controlled,
and controlled unskilfully.

She had never before known a man resembling this new revelation of
Grandcourt. Without considering or understanding why, she began to
experience an agreeable sense of restfulness and security in the silence
which endured between them. He stood full in the sunlight, very deeply
preoccupied with the contents of his fly-book; she leaned back on the
sun-scorched railing of the bridge, bathing-suit tucked under one arm,
listening to the melody of the rushing stream below. It seemed almost
like the intimacy of old friendship, this quiet interval in the sun,
with the moving shadows of leaves at their feet and the music of the
water in their ears--a silence unbroken save by that, and the pure,
sweet call-note of some woodland bird from the thickets beyond.

"What fly are you trying?" she asked, dreamily conscious of the
undisturbed accord.

"Wood-ibis--do you think they might come to it?" he asked so naturally
that a sudden glow of confidence in him, in the sunlit world around her,
warmed her.

"Let me look at your book?"

He brought it. Together they fumbled the brilliantly patterned aluminum
leaves, fumbling with tufted silks and feathers, until she untangled a
most alluringly constructed fly and drew it out, presenting it to him
between forefinger and thumb.

"Shall we try it?"

"Certainly," he said.

Duane, carving hieroglyphics on the bark of the big beech, raised his
head and looked after them.

"That's a pretty low trick," he said to himself, as they sauntered away
toward the Gray Water. And he scowled in silence and c