She stooped down and picked up something from the floor. It was the little man out of the cart that the child had been playing with, that lay there, smashed, at her feet. The manager's wife had stepped on it. Kitty set the little man upon the seat and smiled at him sadly. And Lucy smiled at her out of a great and sudden tenderness.
He thought he saw it now.
"I think," said he, "you must allow for a little maternal jealousy."
"Jealousy? I can understand jealousy."
"So can I," said Lucy.
"And you think that was jealousy?"
"Well, you know, that little boy was making barefaced love to you."
She laughed. "I suppose," she said, "you would feel like that about it."
She got up and they went out, past the hotel front and down the lawn, in sight of the veranda, where at this hour everybody was there to see them. Lucy meant everybody to see. He had chosen that place, and that hour, also, which wore, appropriately, the innocence of morning. He knew her pitiful belief that he was defying public opinion in being seen with her; but from her ultimate consent, from her continuous trust in him, and from the heartrending way she clung to him, he gathered that she knew him, she knew that defiance, from him, would be a vindication of her.
He did not yet know how dear she had become to him. Only, as he looked at her moving close beside him, so beautiful and so defenceless, he thanked God that he had kept his manhood clean, so that nothing that he did for her could hurt her.