He sat down almost in despair, with the idea of merely making an evening call and postponing more important matters to a time when he should be better inured to the effects of her presence. But as he sat and watched her as she talked to him and looked over her arithmetic papers he felt his courage gradually return. Her physical presence was simply irresistible, distant and difficult of approach as she seemed.
"Do tell all about North Carolina," said Madge; "it's a delightful state, isn't it?"
"Oh, delightful."
"So I understand. My idea of it is a fashionable place where people go to recover from something, but I suppose there's more to it than that. The only other thing I know about it is geological; a remnant of physical geography, ages ago. I seem to remember something about triassic.... What is your North Carolina like, fashionable or triassic?"
"Not triassic, certainly."
"No, I suppose not. It's very nice triassic, though; coal, and all sorts of lovely things, as I remember it. You must have been fashionable. Asheville, and that sort of thing."
"Not at all. I was helping Trotty to recover from something."
"Oh, really? What?"
"Pneumonia. Also pleurisy."
"Indeed! I didn't know anything about that; I thought you went simply to shoot things. So Jack Trotwood has had pleural pneumonia, has he? That's a horrid combination; poor Uncle Rudolph Scharndorst died of it. You often do if you have it hard enough and are old enough, or drink enough...."