She caught something of his mood and waited a moment to summon the courage to ask very gently:
"And doesn't it ... doesn't love work out in life?"
He shook his head.
"Seldom, ma'am. In books folks gamble with it like it was ... why, ma'am, like their love was a white chip!"
Again he spoke as of a sacrilege and his earnestness, though he did not appear to be thinking of her, confused the girl. The wordless interval which followed was distressing to her so she said:
"And the other forms of expression? Music? Poetry? Painting?"
"You've got me on music," he confessed with a laugh. "I've heard greasers playin' fandangoes on busted old guitars that sounded a lot sweeter to me than any band I ever heard.
"As for poetry ... I don't know,"—shaking his head. "I read some; tried to understand it, but it seems all messed up with words as if poets liked to take the long, painful way of telling things.
"I expect poets want to tell something that's sort of ... delicate an' beautiful.... Now and then I've got a funny feel out of poetry, but it ain't anything to me like, say, seeing a bunch of little quail run along under the brush, heads up, lookin' back at you, whistlin' to each other. That's the most delicate thing I've ever seen or heard....
"I've seen some paintings, in Los and San Francisco; once in Chicago and once in Denver. I don't know. They don't get my idea of it. I never want to see anything more beautiful than sunrise over the Grand Cañon, or sunsets over these hills, dust storm on the desert, snow blowin' before a norther off the ridges, and things like that. God, who's such a close friend to the Reverend, and who I don't know much about, is as good a painter as any I've ever seen."