To Ann he said, "But you haven't read many of the more modern novels, have you? And very little poetry?"
"I couldn't get them," Ann answered regretfully. "There's no library in the village." She did not add, "And I have no money to buy books," but Edward understood.
"I have any number of them—good and bad—at Westmore. I should be glad to lend you anything you would like to read."
Ann did not know what to say. She had collided again with the family quarrel. But she wanted to see Edward again. No one had ever talked to her as he had, or treated her as he did. He was quite different from Garvin, far more deferential, and yet eager to please her. She felt intensely sorry for Garvin; things seemed to be all wrong with him, just as they were with her. And she wanted him to love her; she wanted every man to love her—even Ben Brokaw. It was delightful to feel that she could interest them—as she was interesting Edward Westmore. It was wonderful that she could interest him. He was the most courtly man she had ever seen, and the most distinguished-looking. She was accustomed to tanned faces; the black and white contrasts of Edward's face pleased her. He was tall and erect and dignified. She felt a tremendous respect for him, and at the same time she felt perfectly at one with him; he was so pleasant to be with.
"I'd like very much to have the books," she said somewhat helplessly.
Edward smoothed out the difficulty without mentioning it. "I go by here so often, to the club—I could easily leave them up there, beside the bushes. If some one else found them or they got rained on, it wouldn't matter—there are plenty of others." He looked up at her, smiling quizzically. "I go to the club almost every afternoon, and ride back about this time—just when you will be curled up here in the hollow examining what I have left. I know you will do just that, because that is what all book-lovers do—an unread book is as tantalizing as ripe fruit just out of reach."
Ann thought it was a nice way of being told that he wanted to see her again, and she answered with much of his own manner. "Maybe—but never as late as this, though. See, the sun's most down, an' supper waitin' for you at Westmore, like it is for me up at the farm."
"That means that I am dismissed—that it's growing late, and that I've let you sit here without your cape around you.... Let me put it on for you—before we go up."
He wrapped it about her, his touch light yet lingering, brought it together under her chin, as one would with a child. "Have you felt cold?" he asked tenderly, as if guarding something infinitely precious.
For the second time that day affection lifted in Ann's eyes. In all her life no one had looked at her or spoken to her in just that way; even Garvin had not. "No, I have been warm," she answered softly.