“Poor little starved heart,” he thought. “Mad as she is, she is still woman enough to suffer for the want of little children about her.”
When he had done with the twins there was a long silence in the cabin. He had pretty well talked himself out, in the first place. And in the second, he wanted time to think. He couldn’t sit here and babble on this way indefinitely. Soon or late he must seek actively, rather than thus passively, for the solution to his problem.
Leaning back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head, he smiled at her pleasantly. And he fancied that she was puzzled by him, that almost she was ready to wonder if all men were in truth the creatures of evil she so evidently had thought them. Was she almost ready to believe in him a little bit?
“Swallow some more fire,” said Paula suddenly.
“Eh?” muttered Sheldon.
“Yes,” she told him. “I won’t run this time.”
His lips twitching, he drew out his pipe and again lighted it. He saw that she was tremendously interested. The scratching of the match made her draw back as though from a threatened blow, but she caught herself and did not move again. He drew in a great mouthful of smoke and sent it out ceilingward. She watched that, too, interestedly.
“You see,” he informed her with a semblance of gravity as deep as her own, “I don’t swallow the fire. I just take in the smoke and send it out again.”
“Why do you do it?” she wanted to know. “Is it some sort of magic?”
“Bless you, no!” he chuckled. “It’s just for fun; a kind of habit, you know. A man smokes just as you’d eat ice-cream or candy, or something that was fun to eat. Just as— By glory!” He caught himself up. “I’ll bet you don’t know what candy is! Do you?”