“Because I was afraid of some one. I was running away, Mr. Morena. There’s some one that mustn’t ever find me now, and to run away from him—that was the business of my life. And it kept my heart full of him and the dread of his coming. You see, that was my happiness. I hoped he was taking after me so’s I could run away.” She laughed apologetically. “Does that sound crazy to you?”
“No. I think I understand. And here?”
“He’ll never come here. He’ll never find me. It’s been four years. And I’m so changed. This”—she gave herself a downward look—“this isn’t the ‘gel’ he wants.... Probably by now he’s given me up. Maybe he’s found another. Everything that’s bad and hateful can find me out here. Bad things can find you out and try to clutch after you anywheres. But when something wild and clean comes hunting for you, something out of the big lonely places—why, it would be scared to follow into this city.”
“You’re lonely, Jane. I’ve told you a hundred times that you ought to make friends for yourself.”
“Oh, I don’t care for that. I don’t want friends, not many friends. These acting people, they’re not real folks. I don’t savvy their ways and they don’t savvy mine. They always end by disliking me because I’m queer and different from them. You have been my friend, and your wife—that is, she used to be.” Suddenly Jane became more her usual self and spoke with childlike wistfulness. “She doesn’t come to see me any more, Mr. Morena. And I could love her. She’s so like a little girl with those round eyes—” Jane held up two circles made by forefingers and thumbs to represent Betty’s round eyes. “Oh, dear!” she said; “isn’t she awfully winning? Seems as if you must be taking care of her. She’s so small and fine.”
Jasper laughed with some bitterness.
“She doesn’t like me now,” sighed Jane, but the feelings Betty had hurt were connected with a later development so that they turned her mood and brought her to a more normal dejection. She was no longer a caged beast, she had temporarily forgotten her bars.
“I think you’re wrong,” said Jasper doubtfully. “Betty does like you. She’s merely busy and preoccupied. I’ve been neglected myself.”
Jane gave him a far too expressive look. It was as though she had said, “You don’t fancy that she cares for you?”
Jasper flushed and blinked his long, Oriental eyes.