CHAPTER III
How would she take it?
That was what interested Davidge most. What was she really like? And what would she do with this intractable situation? What would the situation do with her? For situations make people as well as people situations.
Now was the time for an acquaintance of souls. An almost absolute dark erased them from each other’s sight. Their eyes were as useless as the useless eyes of fish in subterrene caverns. Miss Webling could have told Davidge the color of his eyes, of course, being a woman. But being a man, he could not remember the color of hers, because he had noted nothing about her eyes except that they were very eye-ish.
He would have blundered ridiculously in describing her appearance. His information of her character was all to gain. He had seen her wandering about Washington homeless among the crowds and turned from every door. She had borne the ordeal as well as could be asked. She had accepted his proffer of protection with neither terror nor assurance.
He supposed that in a similar plight the old-fashioned woman––or at least the ubiquitous woman of the special eternal type that fictionists call “old-fashioned”––would have been either a bleating, tremulous gazelle or a brazen siren. But Miss Webling behaved like neither of these. She took his gallantry with a matter-of-fact reasonableness, much as a man would accept the offer of another man’s companionship on a tiresome journey. She gave none of those multitudinous little signals by which a woman indicates that she is either afraid that a man will try to hug her or afraid that he will not. She was apparently planning neither to flirt nor to faint.
Davidge asked in a matter-of-fact tone: “Do you think you could walk to town? The driver says it’s only three-fo’ miles.”
She sighed: “My feet would never make it. And I have on high-heeled boots.”
His “Too bad!” conveyed more sympathy than she expected. He had another suggestion.