"Would that be so terrible?" The flash from the amber eyes that she turned up to him made the world go zig-zagging through a long space while Steering looked on with a great tremulous intake of breath. Then he steadied again to what he wanted to say to her and could say to her for Piney's sake.
"It would be for Piney. Piney is going to love hopelessly," he saw that a little shiver caught her and he was glad of it. "Yes, it would be terrible to love hopelessly, wouldn't it?" he said, to strengthen his hidden appeal for Piney. He wanted to make her realise what she was doing for Piney, realise that for sheer kindness, kindness as to a dumb thing, she should never let the lad come near her. He had forgotten the woman in her when he began to formulate that appeal. She laughed a light, mocking laugh.
"I believe that you think that Piney loves me!" she cried. "Piney, the spirit of the oaks! the song of the night-wind! Piney suffer! Piney love!" Steering was sorry to hear the note of evasion in her voice. No woman, he remembered, too late, could be brought to treat man's love or boy's love quite honestly. His eyes clouded. He felt masculinely, sanely sympathetic with Piney.
"I wish," he said gloomily, "that you would sometimes put yourself in the place of a man who loves you, put yourself in Piney's place."
Her eyes crinkled up again. "I'll just do it," she said gaily, "I'll do it now. Presto," she shut her eyes. "Now I have his point of view. Now I'm seeing what he sees—that Miss Sally Madeira likes to hear him sing, and humours him and pets him because he is gay and glad to be alive, and because Uncle Bernique says that he needs somebody to mother him. I mother Piney. Can't you see that." She laughed again and arose and stood in front of him, gay, mocking, nonchalant. "Piney love! And if Piney could love, that you should fancy that he might dare love Salome Madeira!"
He forgot about Piney. She blocked his farther vision like a shaft of light. He could not see an inch beyond her. Madeira's voice rang down the garden walk. Steering did not hear it. "Salome! Salome!" he murmured, "Is that it, Salome?"
"Yes, that's it, Salome. Isn't it foolish? The Di down there is the Diaphanous, too. Some pioneer poet named it for its shimmer, but what good did it do? Missouri promptly called it the 'Di.' No more good is it to name a child Salome in the backwoods of Missouri. She's bound to grow up Sally. I've always been Sally, except at school. I'll always be Sally down here with my own people."
"No, you won't always be Sally—no you won't always be down here with your own people either,"—he leaned back on the bench and watched her, his eyes half shut, his whole sense of being illumined by her, his tongue playing audaciously with his discretion.
"Yes, I shall always be Sally, too." That bisque-warm skin of hers flushed wondrously and she seemed to talk out of a little confused audacity of her own. Madeira's voice rang down the walk again. "Yes, Father!—and down here with my own people, too. Yes, Father!"
"Company's here, Sally."