A thrill of emotion shot through the frame of the Quaker at the touch of those delicate and beautiful fingers.

The contrast between his own hands and hers was marked enough to be almost ridiculous. Hers were tiny, soft and white. His were large, brown and calloused. He thought to himself, "It is as if two little white mice were playing about an enormous trap which in a moment may seize them."

Neither of them, spoke. The delicate finger of the gypsy moved over the lines of the palm like that of a little school-girl over the pages of a primer. They did not realize how dangerous was that proximity, nor how fatal that touch. Through those two poles of Nature's most powerful battery, the magnetic and mysterious current of love was pa.s.sing.

"What do you see?" said David, at last.

"Shall I tell you?" she asked, lifting her eyes to his.

"If you please," he said.

"I will do so if you wish; but if the story of your life is really written in the palm of your hands, it is sad indeed, and you would be happier if you knew it not."

"But it is not written there. I do not believe it, nor do you."

"Let us hope that it is not," she answered, and began the following monologue in a low musical monotone:

"Marked as it is with the signs of toil, this hand has still retained all those characteristics that an artist would choose as a model. It is perfect in its form. The palm is of medium size, the fingers without knots, the third phalanges are all long and pointed, and the thumb is beautifully shaped. Whoever possesses a hand like this must be guided by ideals. He is a worshiper of the sublime and beautiful. He disdains small achievements, embarks enthusiastically upon forlorn hopes, and is spurred to victory by the fervor of his desires.

"See this thumb! How finely it is pointed. The first phalanx is short, and indicates that above all other things he is a man of heart and will be dominated by his affections. He will yield to temptations, perhaps; but the second phalanx is long and reveals a power of reason and logic which will probably triumph at last."

Not a single word of all this had David heard. Her voice sounded to him like the low droning of bees in a meadow, and he had been watching the movements of her fingers, as he used to watch the dartings of the minnows in the pools of the brook which ran through his farm.

"How smooth the fingers are! And how they taper to the cone," continued Pepeeta. "Here is this one of Jupiter, for example. How plainly it tells of religiousness and perhaps of fanaticism! The Sun finger is not long.

Nay, it is not long enough. There is too little love of glory here. And the Saturnian finger is too long. The life is too much under the dominion of Fate or Destiny. The Mercurial finger is short. He will be firm in his friendships. The moons all correspond. They, also, are too large. The Mount of Venus, here at the base of the thumb, is excessively developed, and indicates capacity for gentleness, for chivalry, for tenderness and love. The Mount of the Moon is small. That is good. There will be no disturbance of the brain, no propensity towards lunacy. Mars is not excessive, but it is strong, and he will be bold and courageous, but not quarrelsome."

The pleasant murmur of the voice, the gentle pressure of her hand, her nearness and her beauty, had rendered the Quaker absolutely oblivious to her words.

"Let me now examine the lines," she continued. "Here is the line of the heart. It pa.s.ses clear across the palm. It is well marked at every point and is most p.r.o.nounced upon the upper side. The love will not be a sensual pa.s.sion, but look! it is joined to the head below the finger of Saturn. It is the sign of a violent death! Heavens!"

As she uttered this exclamation, she pressed the hand convulsively between her own, and looked up into his face.

The involuntary and sudden action recalled him to his consciousness.

"What did you say?" he asked.

"Have you not been listening?" she replied, repressing both her anxiety and her annoyance.

"No; was it a good story or a bad one which you were reading?"

"It was both."

"Well--it is no matter, those accidental marks can have no significance."

"Do you think so?"

"I am sure."

"You do not believe in any signs?"

"None."

"You know that the traveler on the desert told the Bedouin that he did not, and yet from the foot prints of the camels the Bedouin deciphered the whole history of a caravan."

Astonished at her reply, David did not answer.

"And then, you know," she continued, "there are the weather signs."

"Yes--that is so."

"And what are the letters of a book but signs?"

"You are right again."

"And is not hardness a sign of something in a stone, and heat of something in fire? And are not deeds the sign of some quality in a man's soul, and the expressions of his face signs of emotions of his heart?"

"They are."

"So that by his gait and gestures each man says: 'I am a farmer--a quack--a Quaker--a soldier--a priest'?"

"This, too, is true."

"Why, then, should not the character and destiny of the man disclose itself in signs and marks upon his hands?"

David was too much astonished by these words to answer. They revealed a mental power which he had not even suspected her of possessing. He discovered that while she was as ignorant as a child in the realms of thought to which she had been unaccustomed, in her sphere of experience and reflection she was both shrewd and deep.

"You have thought much about this matter," he said.

"Too much, perhaps."

"It is deeper than I knew."

"And so is everything deeper than we know. Tell me, if you can, why it is that having met you I have lost faith in my art, and having met me you have lost faith in your religion."

"It is strange."

"Something must be true. Do you not think so?"

"I have begun to doubt it."

"I believe that what _you_ said is true."

As they stood thus confronting each other, they would have presented a study of equal interest to the artist or to the philosopher. There was both a poem and a picture in their att.i.tude. Grace and beauty revealed themselves on every feature and in every movement. They had arrived at one of those dramatic points in their life-journey, where all the tragic elements of existence seem to converge. Agitated by incomprehensible and delicious emotions, confronting insoluble problems, longing, hoping, fearing, they hovered over the ocean of life like two tiny sparrows swept out to sea by a tempest.

The familiar objects and landmarks had all vanished. As children rise in the morning to find the chalk lines, inside of which they had played their game of "hop-scotch," washed out by the rain, they had awakened to find that the well known pathways and barriers over which and within which they had been accustomed to move had all been obliterated. They had nothing to guide them and nothing to restrain them except what was written in their hearts, and this mysterious hieroglyph they had not yet learned to decipher.

They were awakened from their reveries by the footsteps of the quack, and by his raucous voice summoning them back into the world of realities from which they had withdrawn so completely.

"Well, little wife," he said, "how is b-b-business?"