"Oh, it was time they were going. They knew I wanted to see you." He could almost feel her eyes and felt that she was making a play for him. It was a new and pleasing experience.
"So you really did, did you? I'm flattered."
There was a coaxing, cloying note in her voice when she spoke directly, that in some way coincided with the breath of the night and the feel of that velvet sky. He got her to talk just to hear the sound of her voice and she chattered on for a while about airy nothings that vibrated pleasantly in his ear: told him about a trip she had just had up to the Indiana lakes, regretted the ruining of a summer frock on a boating party, asked him his opinion of the necessity of chaperones on picnics. There was a suggestion of deference in her manner as well as lightness, a quality that stirred him a little more pleasantly even than the other qualities. She was different from others he knew.
They mounted a slight rise in the road and then dipped into a cool hollow fringed about by the shadows of willows. She paused suddenly in her recital and gave a little ecstatic cry. Seizing his arm she pointed. Over beyond, through a gap in the willows, lay a stretch of shadowy river meadow reaching back for a great distance to the second rise and fringed about its edge by even blacker shadows. And above it danced a million fire-flies weaving ceaselessly to and fro, waving their soft lanterns. They hung, a cloud of twinkling radiance, upon a soft black curtain.
"Oh, stop the car," cried Myrtle. "The lovely things! Let's watch 'em from here."
For some moments neither spoke. They were drawn up to one side of the road partly in the shelter of the willows that lined it and it was snug and pleasant and warm. The light breeze could not reach them. Joe felt exalted. In this communion of spirit he was experiencing something entirely new. It was as though he had known her always. He could feel sure about her. She liked the things he liked. She was alive and she was not aloof. There was a joy in living; she felt it and he felt it. And she was sitting very close. With an easy stretching of cramped muscles he slid his arm along the back of the seat and let it slip carelessly about her shoulder. There was a moment of delicious freedom and relaxation, of kindliness and friendliness and a thousand other little sensations, to say nothing of a spark of a thrill—when she moved easily forward, contracting her shoulders.
"Let's go," she said dully.
Instantly the illusion vanished. Back into his self-belittling he slipped and was silent. Away fled the ease and complacency, and the wind came up from the river and chilled his ankles.
A moment later she asked him quite brightly, "What do you do?"
He had been thinking upon his sin and was startled at the casualness of the question. He laughed, a bit nervous. "Why, didn't you know? What'd you imagine?"