He knew that no woman who danced with Gail's lightness could find pleasure in the stumbling, stilted accompaniment of his handicapped feet; and the conviction sent a fresh thrill through him. He was glad she wanted him to keep on! She had played upon the man down in him and touched upon vanity, one of those weak spots in us. She wanted him near. His arm, spite of his caution, tightened a trifle and he suddenly knew that her hair was as fragrant as it should be—a heavy, rich odor that went well with its other wealth! For an instant he was a bit giddy, but as the music came to a stop he recovered himself and walked silently beside Gail to a seat.
After that he danced with the wife of a cattleman, and answered absently her stammered advances at communication while he watched the floating figure of Gail Thorpe as it followed the bungling lead of her father's foreman.
The end of the intermission found him with her again. As they whirled away his movements became a little quicker, his tongue a little looser. It had been a long time since he had felt so gay.
He learned of the other women, Gail telling him about them as they danced, and through the thrill that her warm breath aroused he found himself delighting in the individuality of her expression, the stamping of a characteristic in his mind by a queer little word or twisted phrase. He discovered, too, that she possessed a penetrating insight into the latent realities of life. The red-handed, blunt, strong women about him, who could ride with their husbands and brothers, who could face hardships, who knew grim elementals, became new beings under the interpretation of this sunny-haired girl; took on a charm tinged with pathos that brought up within VB a sympathy that those struggles in himself had all but buried. And the knowledge that Gail appreciated those raw realities made him look down at her lingeringly, a trifle wonderingly.
She was of that other life—the life of refinements—in so many ways, yet she had escaped its host of artificialities. She had lifted herself above the people among whom she was reared; but her touch, her sympathies, her warm humanness remained unalloyed! She was real.
And then, when he was immersed in this appreciation of her, she turned the talk suddenly to him. He was but slightly responsive. He put her off, evaded, but he laughed; his cold reluctance to let her know him had ceased to be so stern, and her determination to get behind his silence rose.
As they stood in the doorway in a midst of repartee she burst on him:
"Mr. VB, why do you go about with that awful name? It's almost as bad as being branded."
He sobered so quickly that it frightened her.
"Maybe I am branded," he said slowly, and her agile understanding caught the significance of his tone. "Perhaps I'm branded and can't use another. Who knows?"