Suddenly she leaned forward in her saddle and looked at him. There was a
hint of laughter in her glance, and yet behind it a certain serious
scrutiny.
"I'm wondering a lot about you, do you know it?" she drawled softly.
"Turn about's fair play, then, honey," he answered. "You keep me
guessing all the time. But what is it now?"
She did not answer him immediately, but rode on in silence as if
cogitating whether or no she would reply to his question, and in some
way he received the impression that it was not the first time she had
mentally debated the matter. But finally she decided to speak, and again
she turned in her saddle and regarded him with that piercing scrutiny
which reminded him uncomfortably of her father.
"Say," she began, with apparent irrelevance, "what you been doing,
anyway?"
"Me!" cried Hanson. "You know. Been falling in love with you as hard as
I could, and"--his voice ringing with a passionate sincerity--"that's
God's truth, Pearl."
She looked up at him, her wild eyes melting, her delicately cut lips
upcurling in a smile; then her head drooped, her whole body expressed a
soft yielding.
Hanson grew white, almost he stretched out his arms as if to clasp her,
when she threw up her head with a low laugh, a tinkle of mockery
through it, like the jangled strings of her guitar.
"But I mean it," she insisted, and now he saw that she had something
really on her mind, something she had determined to say to him. "Listen
to me," imperiously, "and stop looking at me as if you were looking
through me and still didn't see me.
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