“I didn’t know,” said Jane, “that you had so much romance in you.”
“Romance?” It was almost a bark.
“Why, certainly. No human being could love beauty the way you do and not be romantic.”
“Romantic!” Cleigh leaned back in his chair. “That’s a new point of view for Tungsten Cleigh. That’s what my enemies call me—the hardest metal on earth. Romantic!” He chuckled. “To hear a woman call me romantic!”
“It does not follow that to be romantic one must be sentimental. Romance is something heroic, imaginative, big; it isn’t a young man and a girl spooning on a park bench. I myself am romantic, but nobody could possibly call me sentimental.”
“No?”
“Why, if I knew that we’d come through this without anybody getting hurt I’d be gloriously happy. All my life I’ve been cooped up. For a little while to be free! But I don’t like that.”
She indicated Dodge, who sat in Dennison’s chair, his head bandaged, his arm in a sling, thousands of miles from his native plains, at odds with his environment. His lean brown jaws were set and the pupils of his blue eyes were mere pin 191 points. During the discussion of art, during the reading, he had not stirred.
“You mean,” said Cleigh, gravely, “that Dodge may be only the beginning?”
“Yes. Your—Captain Dennison had an encounter with the man Flint before you came up. He is very strong and—and a bit intolerant.”