His pipe had fallen to the floor. He saw that her eyes were upon it now instead of on him. And the look in them was one of pure terror. She was afraid of a man’s pipe!
Suddenly he understood and his abrupt laughter, startling her, whipped her piercing look back to him. She drew away from him, crouching against the wall, ready to strike if he drew closer or to leap again toward the liberty he denied her. And Sheldon, even while he pitied her, laughed. He could not help it.
But in a little, heartily ashamed of himself, and yet grinning over his words, be said to her:
“You poor little thing, that isn’t any infernal apparatus! It’s just a pipe and the stuff in it isn’t brimstone, but merely Virginia tobacco. Everybody smokes outside—that is, pretty nearly all the men do,” he added hastily. “But I shouldn’t have smoked without asking your consent, in the first place, and I shouldn’t inflict that old pipe on any one if he did consent. But, honestly, Paula, there’s nothing satanic about it.”
“Liar!” she flung at him in scornful disbelief.
He picked up the pipe, knocked out the fire, and stuffed it back into his pocket.
“Look here,” he said quietly, his good-natured grin still in evidence at the corners of his mouth and in his eyes; “you’ve just made up your mind to hate me and call me names. It isn’t fair. Give me a chance, why don’t you? I’m not half as bad as you’re trying to make me out.”
She looked her disbelief, offering no remark. She made no pretenses: she hated him, held him in high scorn, would have struck him down had she been able, would dodge out of the door and slip away into the forest if he gave her the chance.
But, sane or mad, there was one characteristic which she had in common with all other human beings. Even through her fear and distrust of him, always had her curiosity looked out nakedly. He sought to take advantage of this to make her listen to him, then to draw her out a little. So, speaking slowly and quietly, he began to tell her of his trip in, of having lost his trail, of many trifling incidents of the journey.
Then he spoke of Belle Fortune, of men and women there, of the sort of lives they led. And of the world beyond Belle Fortune, the world “outside.” Of Seattle and San Francisco, of the ships and ferryboats, of stores and theaters, of public gatherings, dances, picnics; of how women dressed and how men gambled—a thousand little colored bits of life with which he wished to interest her.