He answered her, Yankee-wise, with a counter question: "Why did you show Abbie my poem?"
"Abbie—your poem—! I do not understand!" Her genuine wonder and surprise made him feel uneasy. 'Could it be possible, after all, that she was guiltless? If so—God! what a fool he had made of himself! He crossed the room impulsively, and laying his hand on her shoulder, looked squarely into her dewy eyes. She met his look bravely, then gently removing his hand, walked in her turn to the door. He intercepted her with a quick movement, his jaws squaring with determination.
"Let us have this thing out, here and now! Why did you deliberately make a laughing stock of me by exhibiting that foolish bit of verse and so expose me to the ridicule of the whole range? I want the truth."
"And you could think me guilty of that!" There was more of sorrowful pity than indignation in the words and they cut him like a bullet. "Let me pass, please. I have no further curiosity to satisfy."
He barred the way obstinately, a shamed contrition struggling with sullen incredulity for the mastery. "Wait a minute," he said thickly. "If I am wrong in this I humbly beg your pardon, but I am going to be sure before I humiliate myself unnecessarily." Angry as she was, she had much difficulty to repress a smile at the arrogance of his vanity.
"Abbie taunted me with writing poetry and the men joined in her insinuations. Their only knowledge of my foolishness could have been derived from one source—the notebook which I lost and which you returned to me. There was no reference to it made before it came into your possession. What was I to infer?"
"That book was handed to me by my mother, who, as I understand, got it from one of the men who found it at the gate. He thought it belonged to my brother and so gave it to her. I beg to assure you that no one saw or handled it while in my possession but myself. And I certainly have not discussed its contents with any one." Reading full belief in his eyes, she recovered her composure instantly and thereafter had him on the defensive.
"Was the poetry really as bad as all that?" she asked with such apparent innocent naïveté that he was compelled against his will to smile somewhat sheepishly.
"It was arrant nonsense," he confessed. And then, somewhat bitterly. "Yet it was written in good faith, every word of it."
"Then I should like to read it," she said, with hypocritical interest. "I am curious to learn what could be the nature of the impressions that you could be impelled to perpetuate in verse."