An interest, a vivacity of manner, such as Gordon had not experienced for weeks stirred in him. Meta Beggs called back into being the old freedom of stage-driving days, of the younger years. Her manner flattered his sex vanity. They progressed famously.
“You don’t like the children any better than you did?”
“They get more like rats every year.”
“I thought about you, held against your will.”
“Don’t tell lies; I went right out of your mind.”
“Not as quick as I went out of yours. I did think about you, though—” he stopped, but she insisted upon his finishing the remark. “Well, I remembered what you said about your shoulders, and I saw you that night at your window....”
“Men, somehow, are always curious about me,” she remarked indifferently; “they have bothered me ever since I was a girl. I make them mad. I never worry about such things myself—from the way women talk, and men go on, there must be something left out of me ... it just seems silly to get all red in the face—”
He almost constructed her words into a challenge. Five years ago, he continued, or only two, he would have changed her conception of living, he would have broken down her indifference, but now—His mental deliberations ended abruptly, for, even in his mind, he avoided all reference to Lettice; they studiously omitted her name in their conversation.
“Are you going to the camp meeting on South Fork next week?” she demanded. “I have never seen one. Buckley Simmons says all sorts of things happen. He’s going to take me on Saturday. I wish—” she broke off pointedly.
“What?”