Part 14 (1/2)

”That's so,” he thought, unused to such quick thought.

”Isn't it beautiful?” she asked him, looking around her. ”Do you try to write all that, too--I mean this sandbar, and those willows, and that woods down there, and--the caving bank?”

”Everything,” he admitted. ”See?”

He handed her the page which he had just written. Holding it in one hand--there was hardly a breath of air stirring--she read it word for word.

”Yes, that's it!” She nodded her head. ”How do you do it? I've just been reading--let me see, '... the best romance becomes dangerous if by its excitement it renders the ordinary course of life uninteresting, and--and----' I've forgotten the rest of it. Could anything make this life down here--anything written, I mean--seem uninteresting?”

He looked at her without answering. What was this she was saying? What was this shanty-boat woman, this runaway wife, talking about? He was dazed at being transported so suddenly from his observations to such reflections.

”That's right,” he replied, inanely. ”I remember reading that--somewhere!”

”You've read Ruskin?” she cried. ”Really, have you?”

”Sesame and Lilies--there's where it was!”

”Oh, you know?” she exclaimed, looking at him. He caught the full flash of her delight, as well as surprise, at finding someone who had read what she quoted, and could place the phrase.

”The sun's bright,” she continued. ”Won't you come down on my boat in the shade? I've lots of books, and I'm hungry--I'm starving to talk to somebody about them!”

It was a pretty little boat, sweet and clean; the sitting room was draped with curtains along the walls, and there was a bookcase against the part.i.tion. She drew a rocking chair up for him, drew her own little sewing chair up before the shelves, and began to take out books.

He had but to sit there and show his sympathy with her excitement over those books. He could not help but remember where he had first heard her name, seen the depressed woman who was her mother. And the bent old hunter who was her father. It was useless for him to try to explain her.

Just that morning, too, he had left Nelia Crele's husband in an alcoholic stupor--a man almost incredibly stupid!

”I know you don't mind listening to me prattle!” she laughed, archly.

”You're used to it. You're amused, too, and you're thinking what a story I will make, aren't you, now?”

”If--if a man could only write you!” he said, with such sincerity that she laughed aloud with glee.

”Oh, I've read books!” she declared. ”I know--I've been miserable, and I've been unhappy, but I've turned to the books, and they've told me.

They kept me alive--they kept me above those horrid little things which a woman--which I have. You've never been in jail, I suppose?”

”What--in jail? I've been there, but not a prisoner. To see prisoners.”

”You couldn't know, then, the way prisoners feel. I know. I reckon most women know. But now I'm out of jail. I'm free.”

He could not answer; her eyes flashed as they narrowed, and she fairly glared at him in the intensity of her declaration.

”Oh, you couldn't know,” she laughed, ”but that's the way I feel. I'm free! Isn't the river beautiful to-day? I'm like the river----”

”Which is kept between two banks?” he suggested.

”I was wrong,” she shook her head. ”I'm a bird----”

”I can well admit that,” he laughed.

”Oh,” she cried, in mock rebuke, ”the idea!”