It
fascinated her, the flow of it, and it helped her to reason things
out. There were several things that needed reasoning.
To begin with--there was no use saying it wasn't so, for it was--she
was in love with John.... Her heart beat hard as she looked down
into the water and said the words in her mind. It would have been
lovely to do nothing but sit there and think of him. There were so
many different wonderful things he had for her to think about; his
steady eyes that changed from warm-gray to steel-gray, and back, and
could look as if they loved you or hated you or admired you or
fathered you, while the rest of his face told nothing at all; the
little gold glint in his fair hair and the way it curled when it was
damp weather; his square, back-flung shoulders; the strong way he
had of moving you about, as if you were a doll--the way his voice
sounded when she said certain words--
Joy pulled her thoughts from all that by force.
"Clarence Rutherford calls me a sorcerette," she thought, "and I
suppose I must be. This must be being one. But, oh, I _have_ to
think how I can get John to love me back!"
It looked a little hopeless, to think of, at first. He was so old
and wise and strong, compared to her, just a nineteen-year-old girl
who had never had even one lover to practise on! Something Gail had
said the night before came back to her--one of the girl's
half-scornful, half-amused phrases.
"Barring a male flirt or so like Clarence over there," she had
vouchsafed, "men _are_ such simple-minded children of nature!
All you have to do is to treat them like hounds and tell them what
to do, and they'll do it.
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