he accepted calmly her calm assumption of his life and actions.

He was twenty, she was eighteen, boy and girl, the pair of them, and made
for progeny, healthy and normal, with steady blood pounding through their
bodies; and wherever they went together, even on Sunday outings across
the bay amongst people who did not know him, eyes were continually drawn
to them. He matched her girl's beauty with his boy's beauty, her grace
with his strength, her delicacy of line and fibre with the harsher vigor
and muscle of the male. Frank-faced, fresh-colored, almost ingenuous in
expression, eyes blue and wide apart, he drew and held the gaze of more
than one woman far above him in the social scale. Of such glances and
dim maternal promptings he was quite unconscious, though Genevieve was
quick to see and understand; and she knew each time the pang of a fierce
joy in that he was hers and that she held him in the hollow of her hand.
He did see, however, and rather resented, the men's glances drawn by her.
These, too, she saw and understood as he did not dream of understanding.




CHAPTER III


Genevieve slipped on a pair of Joe's shoes, light-soled and dapper, and
laughed with Lottie, who stooped to turn up the trousers for her. Lottie
was his sister, and in the secret. To her was due the inveigling of his
mother into making a neighborhood call so that they could have the house
to themselves. They went down into the kitchen where Joe was waiting.
His face brightened as he came to meet her, love shining frankly forth.