At this Lenore hid her face, and while she fell back in pretended distress, she really wanted to laugh. She had learned something new in these few days, and that was to hate.
"Oh no! no!" she murmured. "I—I can't think of that—yet."
"But why not?" he demanded, in shrill violence. His gloved hand clenched on the tool he held.
"Mother has been so unhappy—with my brother Jim—off to the war. I—I just couldn't—now. Harry, you must give me time. It's all so—so sudden. Please wait!"
Nash appeared divided between two emotions. Lenore watched him from behind her parted veil. She had been astonished to find out that, side by side with her intense disgust and shame at the part she was playing, there was a strong, keen, passionate interest in it, owing to the fact that, though she could prove little against this man, her woman's intuition had sensed his secret deadly antagonism toward her father. By little significant mannerisms and revelations he had more and more betrayed the German in him. She saw it in his overbearing conceit, his almost instant assumption that he was her master. At first Lenore feared him, but, as she learned to hate him she lost her fear. She had never been alone with him except under such circumstances as this; and she had decided she would not be.
"Wait?" he was expostulating. "But it's going to get hot for me."
"Oh!… What do you mean?" she begged. "You frighten me."
"Lenore, the I.W.W. will have hard sledding in this wheat country. I belong to that. I told you. But the union is run differently this summer. And I've got work to do—that I don't like, since I fell in love with you. Come, run off with me and I'll give it up."
Lenore trembled at this admission. She appeared to be close upon further discovery.
"Harry, how wildly you talk!" she exclaimed. "I hardly know you. You frighten me with your mysterious talk.… Have—a—a little consideration for me."