"Well, the first one. You couldn't forget that."
"No, I don't mean to tell you," he said coolly. He groped for his words. "You're the only woman who ever mattered a damn to me. If you don't know that now, you will know it ... And it isn't that I want to make myself out any better than I am. Pretty poor average sort ... But I won't tell you. I have a feeling that you're the sort to bedevil me into telling you things with a laugh, and then store them up and brood over them and magnify them."
Pen sent him a curious glance through her lashes. "Good gracious! You're cleverer than I thought!" she said in a tone divided between mockery and pique.
By the time they got out of the woods the moon had traveled a good bit towards the West. Now it almost hung over the taller splotch of black that marked the trees surrounding the big house.
Don said: "Every night as soon as it grows dark I come out of my hole and lean on the fence and watch the house and wonder what you are doing inside. Why is it I never see a light in any of the windows facing this way?"
"It just happens that none of those rooms are used," Pen said. "In the main house the back drawing-room and the guest room have windows facing this way, and in the kitchen wing there is the back kitchen and two servants' rooms upstairs.... After this every night I'll put a light in one of the servants' rooms to tell you all is well. And when it goes out you'll know I'm starting. And if it goes out and comes on again you'll know I'm prevented from coming."
"That would be bad news," he said.
"We might get up a regular code of signals," Pen went on. "Suppose there was danger, and I couldn't come to warn you. Suppose I wanted to tell you to change your camp."
"We'd have to fix on some spot beforehand so you would know where to find me."
"That's the difficulty. I don't know any place safer than this. What place would be safe if they took it into their heads to search the woods? ... There is a safe place though, that I have thought of."