"Oh yes, yes, sure! Blame it on me! Sure! I made you let me put on a kimono! I'm leading your pure white shriveled peanut of a soul into temptation!... Don't you ever dare speak to me again! Oh, you—you——"
She flounced away.
Carl caught her, in two steps. "See here, child," he said, gravely, "if you go off like this we'll both be miserable.... You remember how happy we were driving out to the old plantation at Powhasset?"
"O Gawd! won't you men never say anything original? Remember it? Of course I remember it! What do you suppose I wore that little branch of laurel you picked for me, wore it here, here, at my breast, and I thought you'd care if I hid it here where there wasn't any grease paint, and you don't—you don't care—and we picnicked, and I sang all the time I put up those sandwiches and hid the grape-fruit in the basket to surprise you——"
"O darling Eve, I don't know how to say how sorry I am, so terribly sorry I've started things going! It is my fault. But can't you see I've got to stop it before it's too late, just for that reason? Let's be chums again."
She shook her head. Her hand crept to his, slid over it, drew it up to her breast. She was swaying nearer to him. He pulled his hand free and fled to his tent.
Perhaps his fiercest gibe at himself was that he had had to play the rôle of virgin Galahad rejecting love, which is praised in books and ridiculed in clubs. He mocked at his sincere desire to be fair to Eve. And between mockeries he strained to hear her moving beyond the canvas partition. He was glad when the bandsmen came larruping home from the dance.
Next day she went out of her way to be chilly to him. He did not woo her friendship. He had resigned from the Great Riley Show, and he was going—going anywhere, so long as he kept going.