"Oh, it's only a conventional precaution—"
"Yes? Well, we'll take chances together.... Suppose—by the wildest and weirdest stretch of a highly coloured imagination you jumped a rattler?"
"Nonsense—"
"Suppose you did?"
He said, sobered: "It would be horribly awkward for you to explain. I forgot about—"
"Do you think I meant that! Do you think I'd care what people might say about our being here together? I—I'd want them to know it! What would I care—about—anything—then!"
Through the scorn in her voice he detected the awakened emotion; and, responsive, his pulse quickened, beating hard and heavy in throat and breast.
"I had almost forgotten," he said, "that we might dare look at things that way.... It all has been so—hopeless—lately—"