She tingled from head to foot
at the memory of that day in the glade, and for the first time in her
life she read the love-signs in a man. That change in his eyes when he
had looked upon De Courtenay's red flower was jealousy. With the thought
came a greater fulness of the unexplainable joy that had flooded her all
these days. Aye, verily, that red flower had caused him pain,--him,--with
his laughing blue eyes and his fair head tilted back ever ready for
mirth, with his tender mouth and his strong hands. The very thought of
that killed the joy of the other. If love was jealousy, and jealousy was
pain, the one must be healed for sake of the other. With this girl to
think was to do, and with that last discovery she was upon her feet,
straight and lithe as a young animal beside the door. She would go to
this man and tell him that the red flower was less than nothing to her,
its giver less than it.
At that moment a figure came out of the dusk and stopped before her.
It was her leader, Prix Laroux, silent, a shadow of the shadows.
"Maren," he said, in that deep confidence of trusted friends, "Maren,
is all well with you?"
"All is well, Prix," said the girl, her voice tremulous with pleasure,
"most assuredly.
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