"What do you mean?"
"Only this," he leaned so that his words could not be overheard, and his voice was tense with a strange seriousness. "You knew perfectly well that I was hardly to blame—and, blamable as that defense may be, what I did was done reverently. You may not know, though I'll tell you now, that you were the most exquisite thing I have ever beheld!—absolutely the most adorable and exquisite! You literally balanced yourself before my eyes, you literally taunted me with words which were a challenge of unresisting sweetness, you literally drew me, and when I came, you flew into a rage. You call that fair? I call it grossly unfair! Take it from me, Jane, that a girl who willfully fires a man, as Almighty God fires the heavens in a tempest, and then springs behind her propriety to escape, has a serious form of pyromania that'll consume her some day, just as sure as I'm talking to you—but not before it drives a lot of decent fellows to eternal flames!"
"You're talking like a madman!" she gasped.
"Far from it. I'm talking the most rational stuff you ever heard in all your life! In fact, your very presence compels me to be rational."
"An enigmatic compliment," she could not help smiling. "What kind of deliriant have you been taking tonight?"
"You!" he whispered. "Just you, who intoxicate and torture me! And as for enigmatic compliments, I swear that you inspire me with only the highest reverence at all times. Don't think the library episode indicates a lack of respect! It was the very soul of reverence speaking—though," he slowly added, "it would not have spoken in just that way if Zack's toddy—"
"I'm beginning to hate the very word of julep and toddy," she said passionately; and the Colonel, hearing this, turned with an amused expression of surprise.
Ann had let Dale off her leash, and he now was making mental charges across the table to Jane, very much as a playful puppy would physically have done to one it wished to attract. She caught his eye and smiled, and then saw the haunted look in his face which aroused her at once to what was going on.
The table had centered in a general conversation, and Miss Liz, without suspecting the sting it carried, had launched into a tirade against the lawlessness of the mountaineers who killed and were killed with an abandon worthy of Apaches. That he should now be so frantically signalling, as though he knew in her would be found help, touched the girl's responsive nature. Brent, seeing this—as he saw much that passed about him—whispered to her:
"After all's said and done, it's a good feeling—that of being needed, isn't it?"