The Branding Iron. Katharine Newlin Burt
that was?”
She had sat down on the floor by the hearth, her head thrown back to lean against the cobbles of the chimney-piece, her knees locked in her hands. That magnificent long throat of hers ran up to the black coils of hair which had slipped heavily down over her ears. The light edged her round chin and her strongly modeled, regular features; the full, firm mouth so savagely pure and sensuous and self-contained. The eyes were mysterious under their thick lashes and dark, long brows. This throat and face and these strong hands were picked out in their full value of line and texture from the dark cotton dress she was wearing.
“It’s a pome on a card what father had, stuck ag’in’ the wall.” She began to recite, her eyes fixed upon him with childlike gravity. “ ‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. … Yea, though I walk through the valley of shadows, thou art with me, thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.’ ”
Holliwell had taken the pipe from between his teeth, had straightened up. Her deep voice, the slight swinging of her body to the rhythm she had unconsciously given to her lines, the strange glow in her eyes … Holliwell wondered why these things, this brief, sing-song recitation, had given a light thrill to the surface of his skin, had sent a tingling to his fingertips. He was the first person to wonder at that effect of Joan’s cadenced music. “The valley of the shadow—” she had missed a familiar phrase and added value to a too often repeated line.
“Joan! Joan!” said the “sin-buster,” an exclamation drawn from him on a deep breath, “what an extraordinary girl you are! What a marvelous woman you are going to be!”
Joan looked at him in a silence of pure astonishment and that was the end of their real talk.
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