He smiled from a world of superior knowledge; the unseen watcher was the foundation of the big game he was ever playing. The smile ended in a short laugh, and somehow it startled her—she seemed so naked in thought before this strange foreigner.
"You know what I mean," she went on lamely. "I suppose a gopher peering from its hole in the ground would disturb me sooner or later."
"Don't explain," he almost pleaded, "don't try to explain." He seated himself far up the trunk.
Again her puzzled eyes were on him. In some indefinite way he was so different, so—so human and equal. Outwardly there was no evidence of the change—the same nondescript clothes, the same grimy hands and face, the same coarse boots and clumsiness.
He seemed to read her thoughts, for with a gesture of long-suppressed protest he threw out his hands.
"Yes," he cried, "they're gnarled and dirty, and these old overalls are the mark of my degradation." He flung his hat passionately on the ground. "But I'm not always this way. Back in Chicago I dress—sometimes. There I'm what I like to be, what I can be. Not often—it is not that way I rule."
Her eyes were wide with surprise. "You—you speak—"
He shrugged his shoulders. "I speak English as well as you or any one else. I think in English. But it pays me to look foreign, to fight outwardly the 'civilising' influences of the country of my adoption." A slight sneer twisted his lips. "I must look like a cut-throat, because in that way I've reached the height I've attained in my organisation. It shocks you, because you don't understand, because you've never had to plough the row I've toiled along. . . . I'm not as bad as I seem."
She picked up her work to cover the beating of her heart.
"If you're out of sympathy—"