They sat quietly, she gazing off at
the horizon, he fanning himself and studying her lovely young
face. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-five and a
close observer would have suspected him of an unusual amount of
experience, even for a good-looking, expansive youth of that age.
He broke the long silence. "I'm a newspaper man from Cincinnati.
I'm on the _Commercial_ there. My name's Roderick Spenser. My
father's Clayton Spenser, down at Brooksburg"--he pointed to the
southeast--"beyond that hill there, on the river. I'm here on my
vacation." And he halted, looking at her expectantly.
It seemed to her that there was in courtesy no escape without a
return biographical sketch. She hung her head, twisted her
tapering fingers in her lap, and looked childishly embarrassed
and unhappy. Another long silence; again he broke it. "You'll
pardon my saying so, but--you're very young, aren't you?"
"Not so--so _terribly_ young. I'm almost seventeen," replied she,
glancing this way and that, as if thinking of flight.
"You look like a child, yet you don't," he went on, and his
frank, honest voice calmed her. "You've had some painful
experience, I'd say."
She nodded, her eyes down.
A pause, then he: "Honest, now--aren't you--running away?"
She lifted her eyes to his piteously. "Please don't ask me," she said.
"I shouldn't think of it," replied he, with a gentleness in his
persistence that made her feel still more like trusting him, "if
it wasn't that----
"Well, this world isn't the easiest sort of a place.
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