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Innocent : her fancy and his fact by Marie Corelli
page 14 of 503 (02%)
her claim to beauty. A rare indefinable charm of exquisite
tenderness and fascination seemed to environ her small and
delicate personality with an atmosphere of resistless attraction.
The man beside her felt it, and his heart beat quickly with a
thrilling hope of conquest.

"So you pity me!" he said,--"Pity is akin to love."

"But kinsfolk seldom agree," she replied. "I only pity you because
you are foolish. No one but a very foolish fellow would think ME
lovely."

He raised himself a little and peered over the edge of the hay-
load to see if there was any sign of the men returning with Roger,
but there was no one in the field now except the venerable
personage he called Uncle Hugo, who was still smoking away his
thoughts, as it were, in a dream of tobacco. And he once more
caught the hand he had just let go and covered it with kisses.

"There!" he said, lifting his head and showing an eager face lit
by amorous eyes. "Now you know how lovely you are to me! I should
like to kiss your mouth like that,--for you have the sweetest
mouth in the world! And you have the prettiest hair,--not raw gold
which I hate,--but soft brown, with delicious little sunbeams lost
in it,--and such a lot of it! I've seen it all down, remember! And
your eyes would draw the heart out of any man and send him
anywhere,--yes, Innocent!--anywhere,--to Heaven or to Hell!"

She coloured a little.

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