THE AWAKENING
to come already formed from the soft throat. There was a husky vibration which made people stare when first they heard her speak; the men invariably returned to hear her speak again. People ascribed to her a singing voice; she could not sing a note, could scarcely make her voice carry across a street, yet it undertoned the clatter of many people talking in unison.
Manning and Giles threw aside their blazers and stepped into the court. Two men of the same race could scarcely have been more different, thought Virginia. Giles was big—bigger in muscle than bone—strong, sure, but a trifle awkward; many of his best strokes seemed accidental, but were not. Giles was very fair, ruddy, with crisp brown hair and eyes like sapphires. Manning was a trifle undersized, quick and graceful as a cat, with hair as straight and black and glossy but far finer than that of an Arapahoe, and a face of rather striking beauty.
He and Virginia were similar in feature, but distinctly different in expression. Virginia was tall for a woman, Manning short for a man; both had the same clear, faintly tinted complexion, light-hazel eyes; both had the same square roundness of face, the supple fullness of limb, the fineness of skin and feature, the somatic type of the Celt: Irish, French, or both. What was simply winning in Manning was in Virginia seductive; the short nose, the mirthful mouth, the dreamy eyes. People were not ready to admit the beauty of Virginia, even while unable to take their eyes from her. Manning held his audience by his high, hard voice, startlingly different from that of his sister, and by the cold cynicism of the things he said which most people con-
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