“Yes? And I have a sort of feeling in my bones that when I get all right again, if I should come back to work for you again, I’d make you tired like that, too,” Rock said dispiritedly.
“You?” Nona looked at him earnestly. “We-ll—you’re different.”
“Eh?” He stared at her unbelievingly. She was smiling at him. A bit wistfully, it is true, but smiling. He couldn’t find any of that old imperious disdain. A ripple of amusement crossed her face and vanished.
Rock disregarded his game leg. Impetuously he rose. So did Nona. He put his hands on her shoulders and looked searchingly into the gray pools of her eyes. He could read nothing there. It seemed to him that his heart was coming up into his throat to choke him.
“Darn you!” he whispered. “Do you like me, or don’t you?”
She looked up at him with a smile, just the faintest quiver of a smile.
“To tell the truth,” she said, in a breathless sort of tone, “I like you a heap—and that’s saying a lot—for me.”
A minute or so later, Rock tilted her head away from his breast, to stare down at her with a strange misgiving. The gray eyes uplifted to his own were wet, shiny and filled with tears.”
“Why, honey,” he asked, “what’s the matter? What’s gone wrong now?”
“You silly thing,” she murmured. “Don’t you know that there are two times when every woman cries? When she’s very sad, and when she’s very happy. And I’m certainly not sad!”