A Transaction in Hearts by Edgar Saltus — Read

For a moment Gonfallon stared, open-mouthed, astonished as a yokel at a thimble-rigger. And as Claire picked up the book which she had dropped at his entrance, he stood quite still, groping among the obscurities of her speech. But it was impossible, he told himself, that a girl so fragrant of innocence should wittingly make a remark as paradoxically unanswerable as was that. It was a mistake; he had not heard her words aright, or else she had uttered them as a child utters haphazard a phrase caught up and retained. But something in her attitude, the manner in which she turned the page, the carriage of her head, the abandonment of the body, the indiscretion of a foot uptilted on a cushion, the contraction of the underlip betokening a smile suppressed and suggestive of merriment aroused not by the book she held but by some picture which memory had just disclosed -- these things, intercepted in a glance, revealed a Claire unknown and wholly undivined.

Noiselessly as he had entered he turned and left the room. Across the hall was his study; and as he sank on the ample lap of an easy-chair in which it was his custom to scaffold his homilies, suddenly his pulse was stirred. At the moment he made no attempt to dominate, he sat in wonder at himself, the will refractory and perverse. But presently he was on his feet again, his teeth set, and in his eyes that expression which the horseman has when he masters with curb and with knee.