The Heart Line: A Drama of San FranciscoBurgess, Gelett
General
The Heart Line: A Drama of San Francisco
Burgess, Gelett
Bohemianism -- Fiction; Fortune-tellers -- Fiction; San Francisco (Calif.) -- Fiction
"But I did! Does that surprise you? I told you I had intuitions, you
know. You came to bring my ring, didn’t you?"
"Yes, of course. You really have second-sight, then?" He looked at her
as one might look at a fairy, in amusement mingled with admiration.
"Yes—haven’t _you_?" She put it to him soberly.
"Haven’t I already proved it?" His eyes, well-schooled, kept to hers
boldly, seeking for the first sign of her incredulity. Into his manner
he had tried to infuse a temperamental sympathy, establishing a personal
relation.
She did not answer for a moment, gazing at him disconcertingly; then her
eyes wandered, as she remarked: "You certainly proved something, I don’t
quite know what."
He laughed it off, saying: "Well, I’ve proved at least that I wanted to
see you again, and made the most of this excuse."
"Yes, I’m glad I forgot the ring. I’m really very glad to see you,
too—I half hoped I might. Won’t you come up to my summer-house? It’s
not so windy there, and we can talk better."
He accepted, pleased at the invitation and the implied promise it held,
and followed her up the path and off toward the line of trees. The
place was now visited by belated sunshine which compensated for the
sharp afternoon breeze. In the shelter of the cypress hedge the air was
warm and fragrant. Here was an arbor built of withe crockery crates
overgrown with climbing nasturtiums; it contained a seat looking
eastward, towards Telegraph Hill. In front stood a sun-dial mounted on
a terra cotta column, beneath a clump of small Lombardy poplars.
As she seated herself she pointed to it. "Did you know that this is a
sort of cemetery? That sun-dial is really a gravestone. When I was a
little girl I buried my doll underneath it. She had broken open,
letting the sawdust all out, and I thought she must be dead. It may be
there now, for all I know; I never dug her up."
He looked over at the shaft, saying, "A very pretty piece of symbolism.
I suppose I have buried illusions, myself, somewhere."
She thought it over for a moment, and apparently was pleased. "I’d like
to dig some of them up," she said at last, turning to him, with the slow
movement of her head that was characteristic of her.
"Haven’t you enough left?"
She started to reply, but evidently decided not to say what she had
intended, and let it drop there, her thought passing in a puzzling smile
as she looked away again.
He had laid his book beside him upon the bench, and, when her eyes came
back, she took it up and looked at it. A glance inside showed it to be
an old edition of Montaigne. She smiled, her eyes drifted to him with a
hint of approval for his taste, then she turned her interest to the
binding. As she fingered the leather, touching the tooled surfaces
sensitively, her curiosity did not escape his sharp eyes, watching for
anything that should be revelatory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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