"Did Mr. Palk get his rise he was after?"
"He did not, Dinah. But Mr. Stockman put it in a very nice way. He's going to raise us both next year. And you? Nothing turned up?"
She shook her head.
"A funny thing among 'em all they can't find just the right work. I wish you was away from Green Hayes."
She had told him all about her difficulties and he appreciated them. He thought a great deal about Dinah now, but still more about himself. He had been considering her when she appeared; and for the moment he did not want to see her. His mind ebbed and flowed, where Dinah was concerned, and he was stubborn with himself and would not admit anything. He persisted in this attitude, but now he began to perceive it was impossible much longer to do so. If Dinah had read him, he also had read her, for she was not difficult to read and lacked some of the ordinary armour of a woman in love with a man. He knew time could not stand still for either of them, yet strove to suspend it. Sometimes he was gentle and sometimes he was abrupt and ungenial when they met. To-day he dismissed her.
"Don't you bide here now," he said. "I'm busy, Dinah, and I've got a good bit on my mind too."
"I'm sorry then. You ask Soosie if I shall come and milk. That would give you more time. Good morning, Lawrence."
He had seen how her face fell.
"I wish I could think of a way out for you. Perhaps I shall. I do have it on my mind," he said. "But there's difficulties in a small place like this. Pity you ain't farther off, where you could breathe easier."
For some reason this remark cheered her. She left him without speaking again and considered his saying all the way home. The interpretation she put upon it was not wholly mistaken, yet it might have surprised the man, for we often utter a thought impelled thereto by subconscious motives we hardly feel ourselves. He did not for the moment associate himself, or his interests, with the desire that Dinah should go away, yet such a desire really existed in him, though, had he analysed it, he had been divided between two reasons for such a desire. He might have asked himself whether he wished her out of her present difficult environment in order that his own approach to her should become easier and freer of doubtful interpretation in the mouths of other people; or he might have considered whether, for his own peace, he honestly wished to see Dinah so far away that reasonable excuses should exist for dropping her acquaintance. Between these alternatives he could hardly have decided at present. He lagged behind her, for love seldom wakens simultaneously, or moves with equal pace on both sides. He might continue to lag and fall farther behind, or he might catch her and pass her. He was at a stage in their approach when he could still dispassionately consider all that increase of friendship must imply. He hardly knew where the friendship exactly stood at the moment. Actual irritation sometimes intervened. He suffered fits of impatience both with himself and her. Yet he knew, when cool again, that neither was to be blamed. If blame existed, it was not Dinah's.