Part 20 (1/2)
The talk became desultory and d.i.c.k's eyes clung more closely to Jane's face, their hard, bright light accentuated. It began to rain and Jane, hearing, looked out.
”Raining! You can't go back tonight. You'll have to stay here. Mr.
Hepburn can fix you up with the rest of the men.”
He smiled peculiarly at that, for it cut. He made no comment beyond expressing the belief that a wetting, since it was not cold, would do no harm. She knew that he did not mean that and contrasted his evasion with Beck's quiet candor.
”What's the idea of the locket?” he asked and Jane looked down at the trinket with which she had been toying. ”You never were much addicted to ornaments.”
She laughed with an expression which he did not understand.
”Something is in there which is very dear to me,” she said. ”I don't wear it as an ornament; as a talisman, rather. I'm getting to be quite dependent on it.” Her manner was outwardly light but at bottom was a seriousness which she did not wholly cover.
”Excuse me ... for intruding on privacies,” he said bitterly. Then, after a moment: ”The picture of some cow-puncher lover, perhaps?”
”No, though that wouldn't be unreasonable,” she replied. ”Such things have happened in--”
”Let's cut this!” he said savagely, breaking in on her and sitting forward. ”Let's quit these absurd ba.n.a.lities.
”You know why I came here. You know what's in my mind. There's a job before me that gets bigger every day; the least you can do is to help me.”
”In what?”
”Tell me what I must do to make you understand that I love you.”
He leaned across the table intently. The girl laughed.
”Prove to me first that two and two make six!”
”Meaning?”
”That it can't be done.”
”It's the first time you've ever been that certain.”
”The first time I've ever expressed the certainty, perhaps. Things happen, d.i.c.k. I progress.”
”Do you mean such an impossible thing as that there is someone else?”
”Another question which you have no right to ask.”
”Jane, look at me! Are you wholly insane?”
”No, but as I look back I think I have been a little off, perhaps.”
”But you're putting behind you everything that is of you,”--his color rising with his voice as her secure conviction maddened him. ”The life that is yours by nature and training. You're going blindly ahead into something you don't know, among people who are not yours!”
He became suddenly tense, as though the pa.s.sion which he had repressed until that moment swept through him with a mighty urge. His breath slipped out in a long sigh.
”You are repeatedly mistaken, d.i.c.k. I have just found my people.”