“Thank you,” he said laughingly, “that’s a very pretty compliment. I see you know how to pay them even if you jump on a man for paying them to you.”
“You’re too greedy for them,” she laughed, “or you’d know that the interest would be added the same if it were Whip or Blazes, or any of the others had bought the sheep.”
“Now I suppose that serves me right,” he said, with a sigh of mock resignation. “I should have been content to take the compliment, and gloat over it in secret.”
“Isn’t it a beautiful night?” she said serenely. “Excuse the transparent method of changing the personal conversation.”
“I’ve noticed,” he said, “that when a woman runs away from a subject, it’s usually because she’s afraid of it.”
“And you might have noticed,” she countered, “that when she does start to run away she can’t be persuaded or lured into facing it again—till she’s ready. It’s a beautiful night.”
“Yes,” he said a trifle bitterly, “but a beautiful night out here is mostly like a beautiful woman, sweet and caressing maybe, so long as she wins her game, but hard enough and bitter enough back of it.”
“I certainly can’t twist a compliment out of that,” she said drily; “I’d be interested to know whether you think me ugly, or merely bitter and hard.”
“You’re pretty enough,” he said bluntly, “but I’ve no doubt you could and would be hard enough if the occasion arose.”
“This is being frank with a vengeance,” she said ruefully. “But I suppose I brought it on myself. I can only hope, then, the occasion will not come.”