"We won't do any sneaking or hiding around about it," Daylight was explaining.
"We'll ride around as bold if you please, and if anybody sees us, why, let them.
If they talk—well, so long as our consciences are straight we needn't worry.
Say the word, and Bob will have on his back the happiest man alive."
She shook her head, pulled in the mare, who was impatient to be off for home, and glanced significantly at the lengthening shadows.
"It's getting late now, anyway," Daylight hurried on, "and we've settled nothing after all.
Just one more Sunday, anyway—that's not asking much—to settle it in."
"We've had all day," she said.
"But we started to talk it over too late.
We'll tackle it earlier next time.
This is a big serious proposition with me, I can tell you.
Say next Sunday?"
"Are men ever fair?" she asked.
"You know thoroughly well that by 'next Sunday' you mean many Sundays."
"Then let it be many Sundays," he cried recklessly, while she thought that she had never seen him looking handsomer.
"Say the word.
Only say the word.
Next Sunday at the quarry..."
She gathered the reins into her hand preliminary to starting.
"Good night," she said, "and—"
"Yes," he whispered, with just the faintest touch of impressiveness.
"Yes," she said, her voice low but distinct.
At the same moment she put the mare into a canter and went down the road without a backward glance, intent on an analysis of her own feelings.
With her mind made up to say no—and to the last instant she had been so resolved—her lips nevertheless had said yes.
Or at least it seemed the lips.
She had not intended to consent.
Then why had she?
Her first surprise and bewilderment at so wholly unpremeditated an act gave way to consternation as she considered its consequences.
She knew that Burning Daylight was not a man to be trifled with, that under his simplicity and boyishness he was essentially a dominant male creature, and that she had pledged herself to a future of inevitable stress and storm.
And again she demanded of herself why she had said yes at the very moment when it had been farthest from her intention.
CHAPTER XV
Life at the office went on much the way it had always gone.
Never, by word or look, did they acknowledge that the situation was in any wise different from what it had always been.
Each Sunday saw the arrangement made for the following Sunday's ride; nor was this ever referred to in the office.
Daylight was fastidiously chivalrous on this point.
He did not want to lose her from the office.
The sight of her at her work was to him an undiminishing joy.
Nor did he abuse this by lingering over dictation or by devising extra work that would detain her longer before his eyes.
But over and beyond such sheer selfishness of conduct was his love of fair play.
He scorned to utilize the accidental advantages of the situation.
Somewhere within him was a higher appeasement of love than mere possession.
He wanted to be loved for himself, with a fair field for both sides.
On the other hand, had he been the most artful of schemers he could not have pursued a wiser policy.
Bird-like in her love of individual freedom, the last woman in the world to be bullied in her affections, she keenly appreciated the niceness of his attitude.
She did this consciously, but deeper than all consciousness, and intangible as gossamer, were the effects of this.
All unrealizable, save for some supreme moment, did the web of Daylight's personality creep out and around her. Filament by filament, these secret and undreamable bonds were being established.
They it was that could have given the cue to her saying yes when she had meant to say no.
And in some such fashion, in some future crisis of greater moment, might she not, in violation of all dictates of sober judgment, give another unintentional consent?
Among other good things resulting from his growing intimacy with Dede, was Daylight's not caring to drink so much as formerly.
There was a lessening in desire for alcohol of which even he at last became aware.