“Well, get them for me,” she answered hardily.
Utterly unprepared for this direct attack he was thoroughly disconcerted. “Why, certainly!” he replied, laboriously polite, “the next time—I’ll do it!—when I’m in Stenton again I’ll bring you a pair of silk stockings.”
“Black,” she said practically, “and size eight and a half. You will like me in black silk stockings,” she added enigmatically.
“I’ll bet,” he replied with enthusiasm. “I won’t wait to go, but send for them. You would make the dollars dance. You are different from—” he was going to say Lettice, but, instinctively, he changed it to, “the women around here. You’ve got an awful lot of ginger to you.”
“I know what I want, and I’m not afraid to pay for it. Almost everybody wants the same thing—plenty and pleasure, but they’re afraid of the price; they are afraid of it alive and when they will be dead. Women set such a store on what they call their virtue, and men tend so much to the opinion of others, that they don’t get anywhere.”
“Don’t you set anything on your—your virtue?”
“I’d make it serve me; I wouldn’t be a silly slave to it all my life. If I can get things with it that’s what I’m going to do.”
Gordon Makimmon found these potent words from such a pleasing woman as Meta Beggs. Any philosophy underlying them, any ruthless strength, escaped him entirely. They appealed solely to him as “gay,” highly suggestive. They stirred his blood into warm, heady tides of feeling. He moved over the smooth covering of pine needles, closer to her. But with an expression of petulance she rose.
“I suppose we must look for Buckley,” she observed. Gordon had completely forgotten Buckley Simmons’ presence at the camp meeting. The school-teacher, swaying slimly, led the way over the path to the plateau.
They saw Buckley Simmons at once: he was talking in an excited, angry manner to a small group of men. A gesture was made toward Gordon and his companion; Buckley turned, and his face flushed darkly, Gordon, stood still, Meta Beggs fell behind, as the former made his way toward them. Buckley spoke loudly when he was still an appreciable distance away: