“I’m not exactly feeble-minded.”
“No, indeed. I think you’re a high-grade moron. At least, you act like one. Now, I want to know how you could possibly have gathered the impression that I am in love with you.”
“I cannot answer that query, Maisie. I only know that very recently I began to think you did.”
“You take too much for granted, Dan. Why didn’t you ask me to make certain?”
“It’s not too late, Maisie.” He was desperate—afraid of Tamea and what might happen to him if he did not forestall her by some definite strategy—fearful of being “spoofed” so outrageously by Maisie for a minute longer. In her present mood, half childish, half devilish, wholly womanish, Maisie held a tremendous lure for him. Indeed, the environment was ideal for such a situation. There was the blue sea out beyond them, with the white waves breaking on a white beach; their little subdued thunder as they broke, and then the mournful swish as the broken water raced up the shingle, had a particularly soothing effect upon him. It stimulated his imagination. On the mountains to their right the blue sunset haze still lingered; cock quails were calling to their families to “Come right home, come right home,” and somewhere over in the chapparal a cowbell tinkled melodiously. Why, the man who could ride with Maisie Morrison in such surroundings and not feel his pulse throb with desire for love and contentment was fit for treason, stratagems and spoils.
With a mighty sigh he said: “Well, Maisie, do you?”
Alas! The blundering idiot had neglected to postulate his monumental query with a plain, blunt assertion of his own love for her. Maisie, being what she was, could never by any possibility admit anything now. She would not have him think of her in the years to come as a brazen woman who had proposed to him—that she had been at all gauche. So she looked him coolly in the eyes with a glance that did not conceal the fact that she was irritated profoundly; with a certain silky waspishness she gave him his answer.
“Well, not particularly, Dan.”
Fell a silence. Maisie, glancing sidewise at her victim, observed him gulp. There was a momentary flush and then Dan took up the annunciator and said very distinctly to Graves:
“Step on it, Graves. I think the county motorcycle officer has gone home to dinner. At any rate, if we’re arrested I’ll pay the fine.”