“It’s Saturday,” she replied, shortly.
She turned away from the depot, no cordiality in her manner, but Jim was not to be rebuffed. He kept at her side.
“Since I have been here,” he said, “I have never driven out along the lake shore. They tell me it is a beautiful drive.”
“Yes,” she replied, without interest.
“The train was warm, the dust got into my throat. Seems as if I were filled with it. All the way I kept thinking of expanses of clean water and of breezes off the lake. Won’t you extend our truce to a drive out there with me this evening?”
She turned to him with a queer, abrupt, birdlike, startled movement. There was no pretense about it, she was surprised, jolted so that one peeped for an instant through her mask of sullenness to the loneliness, the yearning within. The crack closed instantly.
“Why do you ask me?” she demanded. “You don’t like me.”
“I asked you because I want very much to have you go. And I do not dislike you.”
“Everybody does.”
“I can’t speak for everybody, but I doubt it. You—you have a way of shouldering folks off, of retiring behind the barbed wire. Folks would be willing enough to like you if you’d let them.”