Her eyes were on mine, and I saw that the pupils were dilated, and the irises so dark as almost to appear black. She did not answer me for a moment, and then simply nodded vaguely and changed the subject.
"I've taken the clock apart more than once. The dining-room one, I mean. When the hands point to eight, it strikes four and it's half-past two, really. I have to tell time by an algebraic formula. I'm going to dissect it again and see if I can't get it right." She laughed merrily, swinging her foot back and forth.
At that moment the collies began to bark again. She sprang up impatiently, and went to the window.
"Darn those dogs!" she complained, "don't they make a horrid racket, though! I can't keep them quiet." Then she raised the sash abruptly, leaned out and cried, "Hush up, there!"
Their answer was a chorus of indignation. She let down the window with a clatter, and walked to the mirror to rearrange her hair, using silver pins that shone conspicuously in her dark locks. Her skirt had sagged away from her belt, at the back, from the violence of her work, no doubt, and she reached to fix it, turning to smile at me coquettishly after she did so.
"Do you like my hair done high or low?" she asked.
"I like it best the way I first saw it, that night," I said. "It was done in a fillet, or a bandeau, wasn't it?"
"Why, no! It was pompadoured, wasn't it? Oh, yes—perhaps it was—I forget—but it's so fine that I can't do anything with it."
Except for these little lapses of abstraction when she stared so puzzlingly at me, she was in high spirits. Her presence filled the room with electricity; she surcharged its atmosphere. She seemed more virile than ever, more full of life, so full that it actually seemed to splash over in all sorts of energetic gestures of her head and hands. As she stood, now, in the center of the room, she made a quick dash at a fly that drifted past, caught it in her hand, smiled at her dexterity, and tossed it aside. She made passes and rapid motions with her arms, as if she were swinging a tennis racket, and tapped her toes and heels in a little clog-dance as she walked. I saw that she was getting bored.
"Well," she said at last, "I must go to work. If there's anything you want Leah will do it for you. You can call her. There's the bell. Don't hesitate to ring it. I'll be so glad when you can come down-stairs and see the place. It's a jolly old shack—you'll like it!"