“But I didn’t see you,” said Jim. “I should not have intruded.”
“This spot is visible for a mile in any direction,” she said, shortly. Apparently she was determined to believe he had seen her and had climbed up to her, probably in the prosecution of the common masculine ambition to scrape up acquaintance with a stray and unprotected girl. Jim felt an embarrassing warmth about his ears.
“You stared at me yesterday,” she said, before he could speak.
“I did not stare at you,” he replied, unguardedly. “I was staring at the expression in your eyes—the hungry expression with which you looked after the train.”
She bit her lips; her eyes darkened; she was startled.
“Can people see it?” she asked, aloud, not of Jim, not of herself, not of anybody or anything that could frame an answer.
Jim ignored her exclamation and entered his defense. “I was walking to pass the time till breakfast. When I got to the wood-lot there I turned to cut across lots. I did not see you. I had other things on my mind than unexpected young women on hilltops at unholy hours in the morning. I am sorry I disturbed you.” He did not go, but stood looking down at her. She was looking past him down the valley toward the distant shimmer that was the great lake. For the moment he was negligible to her; again her eyes, her face, wore that expression as of the woman in the bread-line—of hunger.
In a moment her face relaxed till it spoke merely of discontent, dissatisfaction. Jim thought she would have been homely were it not for the graceful setting of her head on her shoulders, the splendid ease and symmetry of her position.
“I don’t have to explain to every chance stranger why I get up early in the morning and come here,” she said, not so much sullenly as with repression, as though she were damming up something within her.
“Of course not,” said Jim, inadequately.