Watching her out of the tail of his eye he fell into borrowed phrases: “‘Violet peaks uplifted through the crystal evening air.’”
She shot a glance at him suddenly, eagerly; then at once the lids lowered, masking the eyes again as she inquired:
“Thet thar’s poetry, ain’t hit?”
“I’m prepared to go to the mat with any critic who holds the contrary,” he assured her.
“Hit’s comin’ on ter be night. I’ve got ter start home,” she irrelevantly announced, as she slid from her rough throne, and the man fell boldly in step at her side.
“When your honor rules on the matter under advisement,” 99 he said humbly before their paths separated, “please remember that the defendant was a poor wretch who didn’t know he was breaking the law.”
For the first time their glances engaged fully and without avoidance, and a twinkle flashed in the girl’s pupils.
“Ignorantia legis neminem excusat,” she serenely responded, and Spurrier gasped. Here was a girl who could not steer her English around the shoals of illiteracy, giving him his retort in Latin: “Ignorance of the law excuses no one.” Of course, it meant only that her quick memory had appropriated and was parroting legal phrases learned from her father, but it struck the chord of contrasts, and to the man’s imagination it dramatized her so that when she had gone on with the lissome grace of her light stride, he stood looking after her.
Rather abruptly after that the autumn fires of splendor burned out to the ashes of coming winter, and then it was that Spurrier went north. As his train carried him seaward he had the feeling that it was also transporting him from an older to a younger century, and that while his mind dwelt on the stalwart and unsophisticated folk with whom he had been brushing shoulders, the life resolved itself into an austere picture against which the image of Glory stood out with the quick vividness of a red cardinal flitting among somber pine branches.
Because she was so far removed from his own orbit he could think of her impersonally and enjoy the thought as though it were of a new type of flower or 100 bird, recognizing her attractive qualities in a detached fashion.