Minga, shaking her head, started forward, half laughing back at the two men who with concern watched her. "Catch me if you can, anybody," she called to them. "I'm the Lewis and Clark Expedition, I'm Marco Polo, I'm going to explore, I tell you. Who follows?"
One of the most interesting things of the decade is that the coolest, most blasé girl of the time will under the right combination of circumstances play exactly the same game of sex that all her cave ancestors played before her. Minga, the emancipated, the independent and wilful, the haughty and undisciplined, was now courting a very special thrill, the old cave-woman thrill of expectancy to be captured and mastered. Modern women of maturer age realize that in asserting their superiority in general biological ascent they are losing this thrill. It is extremely edifying to study the devices by which they seek to experience while they theoretically disclaim it; a sort of eat-your-cake-and-have-it idea that must necessarily result in some very queer psychoses.
The little scarlet figure, peering through the bushes, deliberately grinned her challenge at Shipman; the tall, composed man, looking on with appreciation, deliberately grinned back, but the more mature grin was a little forced. Watts Shipman understood, he understood very perfectly, he therefore did not pursue; it was Colter who with a worried exclamation darted after the girl rapidly disappearing in the swamp brush.
Sard, also standing up, suddenly noticed that it was growing toward twilight.
She stood there looking so lovely, with her worried eyes, the fine toss of her head, the lips parted, that Shipman instinctively drew near to her. "I wish we had gone with Dunstan," said the girl half to herself. Sard looked over to the lawyer. "You remember my brother?" she asked simply. "It was he who took Minga home that night," blushing a little in this new comradeship, to remember her own stiffness and aloofness that night.
"You're very fond of him?" Watts asked.
"Yes," Sard sighed. "I wish I could steer him right, but," the girl drew her brows together, "none of us seem able to help each other much." She looked at the lawyer smiling. "Sometimes," she confessed, "I worry."
"Of course you worry," said Watts softly. The lawyer liked being near her. He felt her clear honesty pouring all over him. Soft, pellucid, like the refreshment of clean water: "Of course you worry, but you will get tired if we keep on standing here. Sit down; let me take care of you."
The girl smiled; she very gladly let him take care of her. Sard, every inch of her capable and alert, had yet the power of those really powerful among women, that of letting a man show toward her his own best, the thing bred in him by his muscular superiority, the mother-taught sacred thing of his chivalry.
Watts, marveling at the grace of the girl, at her lovely calmness and steadiness, spread out the shawls on the bank. He piled the cushions back of her; he collected twigs and lighted a little fire. "It will be a beacon for them to find their way back," he said. "I rather fancy that little witch, Minga, will put your man through his paces; but he seems resourceful."