He planted his elbows on the table, resting his square chin upon his hands.
An-ina laughed that almost silent laugh so peculiar to her.
"An-ina guess him. An-ina look and look. An-ina see Marcel all smiling—inside. She hear him voice all soft, like—like—Ah, An-ina not know what it like. So she think. She say, what mak' Marcel all like this? Him find something. Him not scare. Oh, no. Marcel not scare nothing. No. Him much please. Marcel boy? No. Him big man. What him mak' big man much please. An-ina know. It woman. So she say."
Marcel wanted to laugh. He wanted to shout his delight. He wanted to pour out the hot, passionate feelings of his heart to a woman who could read and understand him like this. He did none of these things, however.
He simply smiled and nodded, while his whole face lit radiantly.
"That's a hell of a good guess," he cried. "Yes. I found a—woman. A beautiful, blue-eyed white woman. And she called herself, 'Keeko.'"
An-ina swiftly rolled up the buckskin she was working. She laid it on the supper table beside her. Then she drew up her chair, and she, too, set her elbows on the table, and supported her handsome, smiling face in her hands. Again it was the woman, the mother in her. It was her boy's romance. The boy she had raised to manhood with so much love and devotion. And she was thirsting, as only a mother can, for the story of it.
"So. Marcel him say. An-ina listen."