"Oh, you may have looked at the book I was reading."[298]
"I did," he said, "—and at the hands that held it."
"Never dreaming that they meant to wield a pick-axe," she laughed, "and encompass your discomfiture. But after all they did neither the one nor the other; did they?"
He looked at the smooth little hands cupped in the shallow pockets of her white flannel Norfolk. They fascinated him.
"To think," he said, half to himself, "—to think of those hands wielding a pick-axe!"
She smiled, head slightly on one side, and bent, contemplating her right hand.
"You know," she said, "I certainly would have done it."
"You would have been crippled in an hour."
Her head went up, but she was still smiling as she said: "I'd have gone through with it—somehow."
"Yes," he said slowly. "I believe you would."