“Not potatoes this time,” he told her. “Better than vegetables—something to wear.”
“Something to wear,” she repeated, with no show of enthusiasm. “I suppose that’s another old blanket!”
“Wrong again,” he rejoined, amused by the contempt in her voice. She was still contemptuous when he opened his bag and tossed her a dingy bundle; but as she disentangled it, saw lace and embroidery, she brightened suddenly and knelt down to examine in the firelight; while the sight of the cracked hand-glass brought an instant “Oh!” followed by intent contemplation and much patting and twisting of hair.
Theodore dished supper while she sat and pondered her reflection; and even while she ate hungrily she had eyes and thoughts for nothing but her new possessions. Some were what he had taken them to be—underclothes, for the most part of an ordinary pattern; but mingled with the plainer linen articles were one or two more decorative, lace collars and the like, and it was on these, dingy as they were, that she fell with delight that was open and audible. He watched her curiously when, for the first time since he had known her, he saw her mouth widen in a smile. She was no longer inert, the sullen, lumpish Ada, she was critical, interested, alive; she fingered her treasures, she smoothed them and made guesses at their price when new; she held them up, now this way, now that, for his admiration and her own. Finally, while Theodore stretched his tired length by the camp fire, she ran off to her shelter for a broken scrap of comb; and when he looked up, a few minutes later, she was posing self-consciously before the hand-glass, with hair newly twisted and a dirty scrap of lace round her neck.... She was another woman as she sat with her rags arranged to show her new frippery; tilting the hand-mirror this way and that and twitching now at the collar and now at her straying ends of hair.
Lying stretched on an arm by the fire, he watched her little feminine antics, amused and taken out of himself; realizing how seldom, till that moment, he had thought of her as a woman, how nearly she had seemed to him an animal only, a creature to be guided and fed; and parrying her eager and insistent demand to be taken to the house where the treasure had been found, that she might see if it contained any more. He had no desire to spoil her pleasure in her finery by the gruesome tale of the manner of its finding; hence, in spite of a curiosity made manifest in coaxing, he held to his refusal stubbornly.... The house was a long way off, he told her—much further than she would care to tramp; then, as she still persisted, maintaining her readiness even for a lengthy expedition, he went on to fiction and explained that the house was in a dangerous condition—knocked about, ruinous, might fall at any moment—and he was not going to say where it was, for her own sake, lest she should be tempted to the peril of an entry.
She pouted “You might tell me,” glancing at him from under her lashes; then, as he still persisted in refusal, slapped him on the shoulder for an obstinate boy, turned her back and pretended to sulk. He returned the slap—she expected it and giggled; the next move in the game was his catching of her wrist as she raised her hand for a rejoinder—and for a moment they wrestled inanely, after the fashion of Hampstead Heath.... As he let her go, it dawned on him that this was flirtation as she knew it.
It did not take long for him to realize that they stood to each other, from that night on, in a new and more difficult relation; from foundling and guardian, the leader and led, they had developed into woman and man. For a time fear and hunger had suppressed in Ada the consciousness of sex—which a yard or two of lace and the possession of a hand-glass had revived. Once revived, it coloured her every action, gave meaning to her every word and glance; so that, day by day and hour by hour, the man who dwelt beside her was reminded of bodily desire.
One night when she had left him he lay staring at the fire, faced the situation and wondered if she saw where she was drifting? Possibly—possibly not; she was acting instinctively, from habit. To her (he was sure) a man was a creature to flirt with; an unsubtle attempt to arouse his desire was the only way she knew of carrying on a conversation.... Now that she was woman again—not merely bewildered misery and empty stomach—she had slipped back inevitably to the little giggling allurements of her factory days, to the habits bred in her bone.... With the result?... He put the thought from him, turned over, dog-weary, and slept.
So soon as the next night he saw the result as inevitable; the outcome of life reduced to mere animal living, of nearness, isolation and the daily consciousness of sex. If they stayed together—and how should they not stay together?—it was only a question of time, of weeks at the furthest, of days or it might be hours.... He raised himself to peer through the night at the log-hut that hid and sheltered Ada, wondering if she also were awake. If so, of a certainty, her thoughts were of him; and perhaps she knew likewise that it was only a question of time. Perhaps—and perhaps she just drifted, following her instincts.... He found himself wondering what she would say if she opened her eyes to find him standing at the entrance to her hut, to see him bending over her ... now?