She held the door open without saying a word. Unlike at their former meeting she now seemed confused and her confusion was mingled with timidity. The scorching heat was reflected in the iris of her eyes.
Without invitation he went in and sat down in the same backless chair.
“I keep the door closed because that keeps the heat out of the house,” she said as she closed the door.
He was conscious of isolation, of aloneness with her. She was knitting, and settling on her stool she continued to work, her eyes downcast.
“Why do you knit such heavy woolen stockings in the summer?” he asked, watching the nimble movements of her long fingers, the frequent jerks of her elbows, and the intermittent clicks of the needles.
“Why do squirrels store nuts in the summer?” she answered with a counterquestion, and gave a little metallic laugh.
Suddenly she raised her eyes and looked at him for a bare second, her lashes quivering, a faint blush on her cheeks.
He held his breath. The impulse he had felt the first time—the impulse to touch the tip of her nose and the curving red of her lips—came upon him overwhelmingly; her knees, outlined through her thin skirt, tempted him. His eyes soon fell upon the hook where the skirt was fastened at the waist. An impulse seized him to touch that, too. There seemed something endearing about that hook.
He spent an awkward hour and called himself an idiot as he wended his way home that afternoon. She was kindly enough to have manifested a desire to have him stay longer, but he had suddenly risen and left.
As soon as he was out of the hut he wished to go back, and wondered what had made him depart so abruptly, yet even as he wondered he pressed on resolutely toward home.