Going back into the bedroom, she caught Lee watching Gordon behind the curtains. “That’s downright cruelty,” she scolded.
“Well?” Lee shrugged. “Didn’t he say, yesterday morning, that he didn’t take any interest in girls after they grew up?”
“But he does.”
Very illogically, but quite naturally, Lee answered, with a little laugh, “I know it.”
Nevertheless her eyes softened as she watched the lonely figure—that is, they softened until it turned from the beaten trail and headed on the path by which they had come in. Then they flashed. “Oh, he’s going back by the fonda!”
“Ah-ha!” the widow mused. “Now we shall see.”
She did, for having given Gordon barely time to pass from sight, Lee routed out Ramon from a comfortable smoke, mounted, and rode after.
[XVIII: THE “WIND” BLOWS CONTRARY]
In the fundamentals of feeling poor humans are very much alike.
A university training confers no immunity from jealousy, and as he rode into the hills Gordon’s thoughts exhibited all of the phases customary with plowboys and professors who have been flouted and flirted and flurried till they can hardly say whether they are standing on their heads or their heels. He assured himself, of course, that he “didn’t give a damn”! and smoked a pipe to prove it. But after a few puffs the pipe burned out in his hand, wasting its fragrance on the desert air.