"Sometimes. Sometimes I mean more." I set my teeth, closed my eyes—mentally—and plunged, insanely, not knowing whether I should come to the surface alive or knock my head on a rock and stay down. "For instance, when I say that some day I shall carry you off and find a preacher to marry us, and that we shall live happily ever after, whether you want to or not, because I shall make you, I mean every word of it—and a lot more."
That was going some, I fancy! I was so scared at myself I didn't dare breathe. I kept my eyes fixed desperately on the mouth of the pass, all golden-green in the sunshine; and I remember that my teeth were so tight together that they ached afterward.
The point of her pencil came off with a snap. I heard it, but I was afraid to look. "Do you? How very odd!" Her voice sounded queer, as if it had been squeezed dry of every sort of emotion. "And—Edith?"
I looked at her then, fast enough. "Edith?" I stared at her stupidly. "What the—what's Edith got to do with it?"
"Possibly nothing"—in the same squeezed tone. "Men are so—er—irresponsible; and you say you don't always mean—Still, when a man writes pages and pages to a girl every week for nearly a year, one naturally supposes—"
"Oh, look here!" I was getting desperate enough to be a bit rough with her. "Edith doesn't care a rap about me, and you know it. And she knows I don't care, and—and if anybody had anything to say, it would be your Mr. Terence Weaver."
"My Mr. Terence Weaver?" She was looking down at me sidewise, in a perfectly maddening way. "You are really very—er—funny, Mr. Carleton."
"Well," I rapped out between my teeth, "I don't feel funny. I feel—"
"No? But, really, you know, you act that way."
I saw she was getting all the best of it—and, in my opinion, that would kill what little chance a man might have with a girl. I set deliberately about breaking through that crust of composure, if I did nothing more.