His first sight of her--beyond a fleeting glimpse once or twice through the window--had been that day when he had helped Mason carry her and her big chair into the dining-room.

The brief contact had left with him a vision of the delicate parting in her soft, brown hair, and of long, thick lashes which curled daintily up from the shadow they made on her cheeks.

He did not remember ever having seen a woman with such eyelashes.

They impelled him to glance at her oftener than he would otherwise have done, and to wonder, now and then, if they did not make her eyes seem darker than they really were.

He thought it strange that he had not noticed her lashes that day when he carried her from the house and back again--until he remembered that at first his haste had been extreme, and that when he took her from the bunk-house she had stared at him so that he would not look at her.
He did not know that Ches Mason was observant of his rather frequent glances at her during the meal, and he would have resented Mason's diagnosis of that particular symptom of interest.