"Raining! You can't go back tonight. You'll have to stay here. Mr. Hepburn can fix you up with the rest of the men."
He smiled peculiarly at that, for it cut. He made no comment beyond expressing the belief that a wetting, since it was not cold, would do no harm. She knew that he did not mean that and contrasted his evasion with Beck's quiet candor.
"What's the idea of the locket?" he asked and Jane looked down at the trinket with which she had been toying. "You never were much addicted to ornaments."
She laughed with an expression which he did not understand.
"Something is in there which is very dear to me," she said. "I don't wear it as an ornament; as a talisman, rather. I'm getting to be quite dependent on it." Her manner was outwardly light but at bottom was a seriousness which she did not wholly cover.
"Excuse me ... for intruding on privacies," he said bitterly. Then, after a moment: "The picture of some cow-puncher lover, perhaps?"
"No, though that wouldn't be unreasonable," she replied. "Such things have happened in—"
"Let's cut this!" he said savagely, breaking in on her and sitting forward. "Let's quit these absurd banalities.
"You know why I came here. You know what's in my mind. There's a job before me that gets bigger every day; the least you can do is to help me."
"In what?"