"If I'm too close she'll get me easy—hence I'm riding far aback. Good term that—far aback!"
"Perfectly good term, Sheldon—but not true in point of fact. If Miss Emerson wants you she has only to beckon, and you'll burst a girth to come up. All you nice men are alike—at the mercy of a beautiful woman when she calls."
"The vampire!" he reflected. "'A rag, a bone, and a hank of hair!'"
"Maybe"—she reflected. "At any rate, I shall not dispute it. But men like vampires—beautiful vampires."
"'Down to Gehenna and up to the Throne;
He travels the fastest who travels alone.'"
he quoted.
"Again there is no possible doubt of that," she replied. "The difficulty is that he rarely travels alone. The vampire usually gets him, and he carries her too. We women are all more or less vampires—just as you men are more or less rogues."
"I reckon you're right," he admitted. "At the best, it is simply a matter of degree—and we notice it only when the particular man and woman aren't properly mated. Then she is a vampire or he is a rogue, as the case may be."
"Now you know what to look for. A vampire who will mate your rogue!" she laughed. "Is Miss Emerson the vampire?—that is what you have to determine."
"Or am I her rogue!" he laughed back. "It's a pity we don't always match up, isn't it——" Once again he bit off the words and tried to catch them back.