“You wouldn’t take fire from a pine knot,” he said unsteadily.
Her deft hands rearranged her hat. “Some day a man will murder me,” she replied in level tones; “perhaps I’ll get a thrill from that.” Her voice grew as cutting as a surgeon’s polished knife. “Please don’t think I’m the kind of woman men take out in the woods and kiss. You may have discovered that I don’t like kissing. I’m going to be honester still—last year, when you were mending the minister’s ice house, and hadn’t a dollar, I wasn’t the smallest bit interested in you; and this year I am.—Not on account of the money itself,” she was careful to add, “but because of you and the money together. Don’t you see—it changed you; it’s perfectly right that it should, and that I should recognize it.”
“That sounds fair enough,” he agreed. “Now the question is, what are we going to do together, you and me and the money?”
“Would you do what I wanted?” she asked at his shoulder.
“Would you?”
“Yes.”
“We might try Richmond.”
“Don’t fool yourself,” she returned hardily; “I know all about those trial trips. Any man I go with has got to go far: I don’t intend to be left at some pokey little way station with everything gone and nothing accomplished.”
“But,” he objected, “a man who went with you could never come back.”
“Back to this wilderness,” she scoffed; “any one should thank God for being taken out of it.”