The host seemed a little amused by her vehemence. He looked at her keenly with a pair of curious, small, near-set eyes, which June liked even less now than when she had noticed them first. “Well, have a cigarette, anyhow. These are like mother’s milk.” And he offered a box of Virginia.
June also declined a cigarette, in the same odd, rather fluttered tone which caused him to smile in a way that added to her nervousness.
“No? Well, make yourself comfy, anyhow. Draw your chair up to the fire.”
She thanked him in a voice which, in spite of itself was a little prim, and which assured him that she was quite warm enough where she was. The attempted lightness and ease had gone; a subtle sense of fear, bred of hidden danger yet without any root in fact or logic, was rising in her. The position itself was embarrassing, yet so far Mr. Keller had shown no wish to presume upon it. Up till now he had been easy and charming; but June, in spite of worldly inexperience, had the intuitions of her sex to guide her; and she felt instinctively that there might be a great deal behind these graces. She was grateful all the same; they were much needed balm for many bruises.
When Mr. Keller sat down again in the wicker chair, about two yards away from her, a sense of languor crept upon June. The warmth of the fire, the glow of the lamp, the notes of a singularly quiet voice were like a subtle drug. Alive to danger as she was, its caress was hard to resist. Such a position was one of acute peril, for she was literally throwing herself upon the mercy of a person who was very much an unknown quantity, yet what alternative was there?
“Don’t mind a pipe, I hope?” The polite voice from the chair opposite was not really ironical; it was merely kind and friendly, yet feminine intuition shivering upon the dark threshold of a mighty adventure knew well enough how easily a tone of that kind could turn to something else.
“Oh no, I don’t mind at all.” She tried again to get the right key, but a laugh she could not control, high-pitched and irrelevant, was horribly betraying.
“That’s all right then.”
For about a minute, Mr. Keller puffed away in a sort of whimsical silence. Then he said with a soft fall, whose mere sweetness had the power to alarm, “Your hair’s jolly. Very jolly indeed!”
June nervously muttered that she was very glad he liked it.