“Nev’ you mind,” he said.
He could almost see her, standing within his door, her white face blooming from the black. But his sense of her was obscured to him by the need for immediate action, and by his utter present inability to cope with that need.
“How’d you come—to come—to come up here?” he asked curiously.
For a breath she hesitated, and there was a soft taking of breath in her answer.
“I didn’t know no woman I could tell,” she said, “nor no other decent man.”
From head to foot a fire went over the Inger, such as he had never known. And first he was weak with her words, and then he was jubilantly strong. He put them away, but they lay within him burning, where again and again he could turn to them for warmth.
“How—how’d you hit the trail up?” he asked almost gently.
Again she was silent for a moment, and her answer was very low.
“I’d been by here once-to-twice before,” she said.