“Why should you?”
His levity threw her argument off the track. She had planned a physical, scientific proof. How by taking thought, she could gather the blood at a stated point; how congestion would inevitably follow. The sequence evaded her.
“I thought there was no such thing as pain?”
“Don’t try to trap me. Just listen. If I can think a pain there, why can’t I think it away?” The sequence came to her. “See, I think the blood to the tip of my finger. It congests. There is inflammation; a swellin’.”
“Does it hurt much?” She saw a twinkle in his eyes.
“Of course not.”
The two drove on in silence, busy with the thoughts which must divide them. Sam decided that Maria had parted with her charm, her sense of fun. And then he gave himself up to his routine. Baldwin’s alfalfa was fine this spring. If the railroad could handle it, what a crop of melons the valley would harvest that year! There was a stoppage in the canal. The water looked stagnant. He forgot Maria.
She was facing a noble lonely martyrdom. This truth which was being revealed to her, which was dawning above her sky as a wonderful shimmer of light, she must follow where it led. Sam’s obstinacy would keep him out. No, they would not bicker; she was above that. She never quarreled with any one. It must be a closed subject between them; their first barrier. She felt very righteous and holy. He stopped at their house, a square pine cottage, built by jovial Sam Busby, and bossed by Maria.
As he was driving through the pine-board gate, he pulled the gray mares on their startled haunches. Real concern was in his honest face.
“Sure nothing’s the matter with that finger, Maria?”