"I don't know what you mean," he protested warmly. "You're as fine as they grow."
She smiled, a little wistfully. "Nice of you to say so, but I know better. I'm not a lady. I'm just a harum-scarum, tempery girl that grew up in the hills. If I didn't know it, that wouldn't matter. But I do know it, and so like a little idiot I pity myself because I'm not like nice girls."
"Thank Heaven, you're not!" he cried. "I've never met a girl fit to hold a candle to you. Why, you're the freest, bravest, sweetest thing that ever lived."
The hot blood burned slowly into her cheek under its dusky coloring. His words were music to her, and yet they did not satisfy.
"You're wrapping it up nicely, but we both know that I'm a vixen when I get angry," she said quietly. "We used to have an old Indian woman work for us. When I was just a wee bit of a thing she called me Little Cactus Tongue."
"That's nothing. The boys were probably always teasing you and you defended yourself. In a way the life you have led has made you hard. But it is just a surface hardness nature has provided as a protection to you."
"Since it is there, I don't see that it helps much to decide why it is a part of me," she returned with a wan little smile.
"But it does," he insisted. "It matters a lot. The point is that it isn't you at all. Some day you'll slough it the way a butterfly does its shell."
"When?" she wanted to know incredulously.
He did not look at her while he blurted out his answer. "When you are happily married to a man you love who loves you."