She leaned across the table just as he did. Their hands almost met. Naomi had long, languid fingers that invited the touch.
“You’re so—different,” he began. “So awfully different. I guess that’s no news to you, though.”
“So are you—different.”
“Me?”
“Yes—from any man I’ve ever known. You’re like fresh air. The others are—stuffy—like a room that’s been shut tight.”
He gave an embarrassed
, pleased laugh.
“Tell me about yourself,” she suggested, lifting the lever best calculated to open up the dam of formality where the male of the species is concerned.
“Oh, nothing much to tell about me.”
And he proceeded to tell it while they went through two courses. She got a vivid picture of Bill Dixon, a colt straining always against harness of any kind; a lad loathing routine to such an extent that he had quit college rather than submit to it; a young man, impulsive as the wind, more tied to the picturesqueness of ranch life than to the business of it; an only son worshipped by the man who had paved the way, who was both father and mother to him.