"I understand English," I said, "particularly Jean's English. If she wants me now she'll have to say so."
"Oh, get off your high horse. He's a lame nag, anyway! Jean thinks she loves Spoof, but she doesn't. She's just infatuated with him. She'll grow out of that. But you might help her along a little."
"I'm not so sure. Spoof's a pretty decent chap," I said, inwardly giving myself credit for amazing magnanimity.
"Of course he is," Jack agreed, somewhat too readily, as it seemed to me. "But that has nothing to do with it. Jean isn't putting you and Spoof under the magnifying glass, so to speak, and studying out which is the more decent chap. It isn't done that way. And to save her life she couldn't tell you why, to-day, she thinks she loves Spoof, and why, to-morrow, she will know she loves you. Reason doesn't enter into these things at all."
"That doesn't make it any easier for me."
"Maybe not," Jack admitted. "And, as I have argued that reason doesn't enter into the consideration, I suppose it is of no use to reason about it. Then let us get on to ground you can understand. Come on over for supper."
I accepted with more alacrity than might be expected of a young man who was resolved that although tied to the stake he would not thrust his feet in the fire. Marjorie kissed me when I went in,—a kiss for her dear old bachelor brother, she said, obviously in fun, but I think there was a pang of deep sisterly sympathy underneath. Jean was calm, poised, self-controlled; her eyes seemed larger than usual, and the white of them showed that clear blue tinge that is found in some kinds of delicate china. Either the lamp light was peculiarly yellow or Jean's complexion was below the mark. She chatted freely, almost too freely, and laughed upon occasion, but there was no ring in her laughter.
Altogether, it was rather a difficult evening. We played cards after supper, and tried, as so many others have done, to forget our troubles in the chance of a lucky hand. Even the cards were against me. Jean and I had always played together, but to-night Jack insisted that it was not meet that a man should have his wife for a partner at cards, so our combination was broken. I may have had a subconscious and disturbing feeling that Jean's hand, to my left, would have made better holding than anything I could hope to draw from the deck. At any rate I played abominably and went home early.
And so the days dragged on. I kept a corner of my south window rubbed clear of frost so that I might maintain a look-out for a visit from Spoof, for although he was my rival, or because he was my rival, I felt that I had with Spoof something very much in common. But Spoof seemed suddenly to have discontinued his visits to Fourteen and Twenty-two, and for the first time in that winter the trail to his shack was entirely over-blown and obliterated in a waste of snow.
Jack came over every day, and Marjorie and Jean came two or three times a week and gave my shack the womanly touches of which it was beginning to stand in need, but Jean never came alone. I began to understand that the prairies give solitude without privacy; if one seeks privacy he goes to the city for it.