Lize tapped Redfield on the shoulder. “Come over here, Reddy, if you’ve finished your breakfast; I want to talk with you.”
Redfield rose and followed his landlady behind the counter, and there sat in earnest conversation while she made change. The tone in which her mother addressed the Supervisor, her action of touching him as one man lays hand upon another, was profoundly revealing to Lee Virginia. She revolted from it without realizing exactly what it meant; and feeling deeply but vaguely the forest ranger’s sympathy, she asked:
“How can you endure this kind of life?”
“I can’t, and I don’t,” he answered, cautiously, for they were being closely observed. “I am seldom in town; my dominion is more than a mile above this level. My cabin is nine thousand feet above the sea. It is clean and quiet up there.”
“Are all the other restaurants in the village like this?”
“Worse. I come here because it is the best.”
She rose. “I can’t stand this air and these flies any longer. They’re too disgusting.”
He followed her into the other house, conscious of the dismay and bitterness which burst forth the instant they were alone. “What am I to do? She is my mother, but I’ve lost all sense of relationship to her. And these people—except you and Mr. Redfield—are all disgusting to me. It isn’t because my mother is poor, it isn’t because she’s keeping boarders; it’s something else.” At this point her voice failed her.
The ranger, deeply moved, stood helplessly silent. What could he say? He knew a great deal better than she the essential depravity of her mother, and he felt keenly the cruelty of fate which had plunged a fine young spirit into this swamp of ill-smelling humanity.
“Let us go out into the air,” he suggested, presently. “The mountain wind will do you good.”