I could ride with one of the clerks without remark, but with you—no."
"But the world don't know and don't need to know," he cried.
"Which makes it worse, in a way, feeling guilty of nothing and yet sneaking around back-roads with all the feeling of doing something wrong.
It would be finer and braver for me publicly..."
"To go to lunch with me on a week-day," Daylight said, divining the drift of her uncompleted argument.
She nodded.
"I didn't have that quite in mind, but it will do.
I'd prefer doing the brazen thing and having everybody know it, to doing the furtive thing and being found out.
Not that I'm asking to be invited to lunch," she added, with a smile; "but I'm sure you understand my position."
"Then why not ride open and aboveboard with me in the hills?" he urged.
She shook her head with what he imagined was just the faintest hint of regret, and he went suddenly and almost maddeningly hungry for her.
"Look here, Miss Mason, I know you don't like this talking over of things in the office.
Neither do I.
It's part of the whole thing, I guess; a man ain't supposed to talk anything but business with his stenographer.
Will you ride with me next Sunday, and we can talk it over thoroughly then and reach some sort of a conclusion.
Out in the hills is the place where you can talk something besides business.
I guess you've seen enough of me to know I'm pretty square.
I—I do honor and respect you, and ... and all that, and I..." He was beginning to flounder, and the hand that rested on the desk blotter was visibly trembling.
He strove to pull himself together. "I just want to harder than anything ever in my life before.
I—I—I can't explain myself, but I do, that's all.
Will you?—Just next Sunday?
To-morrow?"
Nor did he dream that her low acquiescence was due, as much as anything else, to the beads of sweat on his forehead, his trembling hand, and his all too-evident general distress.
CHAPTER XIV
"Of course, there's no way of telling what anybody wants from what they say."
Daylight rubbed Bob's rebellious ear with his quirt and pondered with dissatisfaction the words he had just uttered. They did not say what he had meant them to say.
"What I'm driving at is that you say flatfooted that you won't meet me again, and you give your reasons, but how am I to know they are your real reasons?
Mebbe you just don't want to get acquainted with me, and won't say so for fear of hurting my feelings.
Don't you see?
I'm the last man in the world to shove in where I'm not wanted.
And if I thought you didn't care a whoop to see anything more of me, why, I'd clear out so blamed quick you couldn't see me for smoke."
Dede smiled at him in acknowledgment of his words, but rode on silently. And that smile, he thought, was the most sweetly wonderful smile he had ever seen.
There was a difference in it, he assured himself, from any smile she had ever given him before.
It was the smile of one who knew him just a little bit, of one who was just the least mite acquainted with him.
Of course, he checked himself up the next moment, it was unconscious on her part.
It was sure to come in the intercourse of any two persons. Any stranger, a business man, a clerk, anybody after a few casual meetings would show similar signs of friendliness.
It was bound to happen, but in her case it made more impression on him; and, besides, it was such a sweet and wonderful smile.
Other women he had known had never smiled like that; he was sure of it.
It had been a happy day.
Daylight had met her on the back-road from Berkeley, and they had had hours together.
It was only now, with the day drawing to a close and with them approaching the gate of the road to Berkeley, that he had broached the important subject.
She began her answer to his last contention, and he listened gratefully.
"But suppose, just suppose, that the reasons I have given are the only ones?—that there is no question of my not wanting to know you?"
"Then I'd go on urging like Sam Scratch," he said quickly.
"Because, you see, I've always noticed that folks that incline to anything are much more open to hearing the case stated.
But if you did have that other reason up your sleeve, if you didn't want to know me, if—if, well, if you thought my feelings oughtn't to be hurt just because you had a good job with me..." Here, his calm consideration of a possibility was swamped by the fear that it was an actuality, and he lost the thread of his reasoning.
"Well, anyway, all you have to do is to say the word and I'll clear out.
"And with no hard feelings; it would be just a case of bad luck for me.
So be honest, Miss Mason, please, and tell me if that's the reason—I almost got a hunch that it is."
She glanced up at him, her eyes abruptly and slightly moist, half with hurt, half with anger.