“Jo,” he asked desperately, when he had joined him, “do you know where she is? She has gone. I must know.”
“Kurt, you might as well try to catch a piece of quicksilver as Penny Ante, if she don’t want to be caught.”
“Have you the slightest idea as to where she has gone or where she might have gone?”
“Maybe I could venture a guess. I’ll have to know first why you want to know.”
Something more compelling than any emotion he had yet known kept down the anger that otherwise would have risen at being thwarted.
“I love her, Jo,” he said quietly.
“For how long, Kurt, have you loved her?”
“Since the first night I met her,” he said slowly and reminiscently. “When we camped on the trail. She lay asleep in the moonlight.”
“Have you forgotten what you warned me against that day I told you about Marta—about marrying a thief.”
“I was a simp, then, Jo. I had never been in love.”