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Page 17
"Come close to the fire," he said, and pulled up a chair for her. Then he
threw more wood upon the red coals. "You must be careful not to catch cold
out here. The altitude makes a cold dangerous. And that gown is no
protection."
"Glenn, one chair used to be enough for us," she said, archly, standing
beside him.
But he did not respond to her hint, and, a little affronted, she accepted
the proffered chair. Then he began to ask questions rapidly. He was eager
for news from home--from his people--from old friends. However he did not
inquire of Carley about her friends. She talked unremittingly for an hour,
before she satisfied his hunger. But when her turn came to ask questions
she found him reticent.
He had fallen upon rather hard days at first out here in the West; then his
health had begun to improve; and as soon as he was able to work his
condition rapidly changed for the better; and now he was getting along
pretty well. Carley felt hurt at his apparent disinclination to confide in
her. The strong cast of his face, as if it had been chiseled in bronze; the
stern set of his lips and the jaw that protruded lean and square cut; the
quiet masked light of his eyes; the coarse roughness of his brown hands,
mute evidence of strenuous labors--these all gave a different impression
from his brief remarks about himself. Lastly there was a little gray in the
light-brown hair over his temples. Glenn was only twenty-seven, yet he
looked ten years older. Studying him so, with the memory of earlier years
in her mind, she was forced to admit that she liked him infinitely more as
he was now. He seemed proven. Something had made him a man. Had it been
his love for her, or the army service, or the war in France, or the
struggle for life and health afterwards? Or had it been this rugged,
uncouth West? Carley felt insidious jealousy of this last possibility. She
feared this West. She was going to hate it. She had womanly intuition
enough to see in Flo Hutter a girl somehow to be reckoned with. Still,
Carley would not acknowledge to herself that his simple, unsophisticated
Western girl could possibly be a rival. Carley did not need to consider the
fact that she had been spoiled by the attention of men. It was not her
vanity that precluded Flo Hutter as a rival.
Gradually the conversation drew to a lapse, and it suited Carley to let it
be so. She watched Glenn as he gazed thoughtfully into the amber depths of
the fire. What was going on in his mind? Carley's old perplexity suddenly
had rebirth. And with it came an unfamiliar fear which she could not
smother. Every moment that she sat there beside Glenn she was realizing
more and more a yearning, passionate love for him. The unmistakable
manifestation of his joy at sight of her, the strong, almost rude
expression of his love, had called to some responsive, but hitherto unplumbed deeps of
her. If it had not been for these undeniable facts Carley would have been
panic-stricken. They reassured her, yet only made her state of mind more dissatisfied.
"Carley, do you still go in for dancing?" Glenn asked, presently, with his
thoughtful eyes turning to her.
"Of course. I like dancing, and it's about all the exercise I get," she
replied.
"Have the dances changed--again?"
"It's the music, perhaps, that changes the dancing. Jazz is becoming
popular. And about all the crowd dances now is an infinite variation of
fox-trot."
"No waltzing?"
"I don't believe I waltzed once this winter."
"Jazz? That's a sort of tinpanning, jiggly stuff, isn't it?"
"Glenn, it's the fever of the public pulse," replied Carley. "The graceful
waltz, like the stately minuet, flourished back in the days when people
rested rather than raced."
"More's the pity," said Glenn. Then after a moment, in which his gaze
returned to the fire, he inquired rather too casually, "Does Morrison still
chase after you?"
"Glenn, I'm neither old--nor married," she replied, laughing.
"No, that's true. But if you were married it wouldn't make any difference
to Morrison."
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