He
had never thought the latter good-looking until he saw him step to the
door to take Miss Sherwood's hand and say in a strange, low, tense voice,
"Good-morning," as if he were announcing, at the least: "Every one in the
world except us two, died last night. It is a solemn thing, but I am very
happy."
They walked, Minnie and Mr. Willetts a little distance in front of the
others. Harkless could not have told, afterward, whether they rode, or
walked, or floated on an air-ship to the court-house. All he knew
distinctly was that a divinity in a pink shirt waist, and a hat that was
woven of gauzy cloud by mocking fairies to make him stoop hideously to see
under it, dwelt for the time on earth and was at his side, dazzling him in
the morning sunshine. Last night the moon had lent her a silvery glamour;
she had something of the ethereal whiteness of night-dews in that watery
light, a nymph to laugh from a sparkling fountain, at the moon or, as he
thought, remembering her courtesy for his pretty speech, perhaps a little
lady of King Louis's court, wandering down the years from Fontainebleau
and appearing to clumsy mortals sometimes, of a June night when the moon
was in their heads.
But to-day she was of the clearest color, a pretty girl, whose gray eyes
twinkled to his in gay companionship. He marked how the sunshine was spun
into the fair shadows of her hair and seemed itself to catch a lustre,
rather than to impart it, and the light of the June day drifted through
the gauzy hat, touching her face with a delicate and tender flush that
came and went like the vibrating pink of early dawn.
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