With a determination as firm as his own, she made her face and eyes opaque, and said on a resolutely gay note, "What's the matter? Can't you stand any more information about early times in Vermont? You must have been having too heavy a dose of Mr. Bayweather. But I like it, you know. I find it awfully interesting to know so in detail about any past period of human life; as much so . . . why not? . . . as researches into which provinces of France used half-timber houses, and how late?"
"You like a great many things!" he said impatiently.
"We must get out into the garden with the others, or Cousin Hetty will be telling her old-time stories before we arrive," she answered, moving towards the door.
She felt her pulse knocking loud and swift. Strange how a casual interchange of words with him would excite and agitate her. But it had been more than that. Everything was, with him.
He gave the sidewise toss of his head, which had come to be so familiar to her, as though he were tossing a lock of hair from his forehead, but he said nothing more, following her down the long hall in silence.
It was as though she had physically felt the steel of his blade slide gratingly once more down from her parry. Her mental attitude had been so entirely that of a fencer, on the alert, watchfully defensive against the quick-flashing attack of the opponent, that she had an instant's absurd fear of letting him walk behind her, as though she might feel a thrust in the back. "How ridiculous of me!" she told herself with an inward laugh of genuine amusement. "Women are as bad as fox-terriers for inventing exciting occasions out of nothing at all."
Then in a gust of deep anger, instantly come, instantly gone, "Why do I tolerate this for a moment? I was perfectly all right before. Why don't I simply send him about his business, as I would any other bold meddler?"
But after this, with an abrupt shift to another plane, "That would be acting preposterously, like a silly, self-consciously virtuous matron. What earthly difference does it make to me what a casual visitor to our town says or does to amuse himself in his casual stay, that may end at any moment? And how scarifyingly he would laugh at me, if he knew what comic relics of old prudish reflexes are stirred up by the contact with his mere human livingness. Heavens! How he would laugh to know me capable of being so 'guindée,' so personal, fearing like any school-girl a flirtation in any man's conversation. He must never see a trace of that. No matter how startled I ever am, he mustn't see anything but a smooth, amused surface. It would be intolerable to have him laugh at me."
Her hand was on the latch, when a deep, muffled murmur from the depths admonished her, "Personal vanity . . . that's what's at the bottom of all that you are telling yourself. It is a vain woman speaking, and fearing a wound to her vanity."
She resented this, pushed it back, and clicked the latch up firmly, stepping out into the transparent gold of the late-afternoon sunshine. She turned her head as her companion came up behind her on the garden path, half expecting to have his eyes meet hers with a visible shade of sardonic mockery, and prepared to meet it halfway with a similar amusement at the absurdity of human beings, herself included.