“He would not have run–a Frenchman.”
“Prob’bly not, ’less he was pretty quick about it.”
She looked up angrily. Of course he must know that he had been splendid, up there behind the rocks. And now to 99be unconscious of it! But that was only a pose, she decided. Yet what made him so stupidly commonplace, and so dense? She hated to be robbed of her enthusiasm for an artistic bric-à-brac of emotion; and here he was, like some sordid mechanic who would not talk shop with a girl.
“I wager one thing,” she fretted, “and it is that when you bring men down to earth you have not even at all–how do you say?–the martial rage in your eyes?”
“W’y, uh, not’s I know of. It might spoil good shooting.”
“And your pipe”–her lip curled and smiled at the same time–“the pipe does not, neither?”
His mouth twitched at the corners. “N-o,” he decided soberly, “not in close range.”
She gave him up, he had no pose. Still, she was out of patience with him. “Hélas! monsieur, all may see you are Ameri-can. But there, you have not to feel sorry. I forgive you, yes, because–it wasn’t dull.”
“Hadn’t we better be––”
“Now what,” she persisted, “kept you so long up there, for example?”