Then the Girl began to fumble through sudden tears at the buckles of her saddle. Her growing hunger and faintness and the heat of the day were telling on her.
"You must think me a crazy fool," she confessed, "the way I have plunged into personalities. Why, I could go a whole year with an alien running-mate and never breathe a word or a sigh about myself, but with some people—the second you see them you know they are part of your chord. Chord is the only term in music that I understand, and I understand that as though I had made the word myself." She tried to laugh. "Now I'm going home! I've had a good time. You seem almost like a friend. I've never had a talky friend."
And she was in her saddle and half-way down the wood-path before his mind quickened to cry out "Stop! Wait a minute!"
A little out of breath he caught up with her, and stood for a moment like an embarrassed schoolboy, though his face in the sunlight was as old as young forty.
"I'm afraid you haven't had much of an adventure this morning," he volunteered whimsically. "If you really want an adventure why don't you come back to the house and have dinner with my brother and me? There's no one else there. Think how it would tease my brother! You're twelve or fifteen miles from home, and it's already two o'clock and very hot. My brother has done some pictures that are going to be talked about next winter, and I—I've got rather a conspicuous position ahead of me in Washington. Wouldn't it amuse you a little bit afterward, if any one spoke of us, to remember our little farmhouse dinner to-day?—Would you be afraid to come?" His last question was very direct.
A look came into the Girl's eyes that was very good for a man to see.
"Why, of course I wouldn't be afraid to come," she said. "Gentlemen are my friends."
But she was shy about going, just the same, with a certain frank, boyish shyness that only served to emphasize the general artlessness of her verve.
With a quick dive into the bushes the Man collared the Bossy and transferred his clanking chain to the bit of the astonished White Pony.
"Now you've got to come," he laughed up at her, and the whole party started back for the tiny old gray farmhouse where the Artist greeted them with sad concern.