Page:Lost Ecstasy (1927).pdf/66

 "You don't really care now whether I go or not," she said. "What you really want now is to have your own way. You hate to be beaten."

He threw back his head and laughed.

"Smart, aren't you?" he scoffed. "Maybe it's partly that," he added honestly. "But about my not wanting you to go, Kay—God, what do you think I'm making all this fuss about?"

"I didn't know."

"Well, now that you know," he said, lightly, as if he had not been betrayed into that moment of real feeling, "what about it? Do we go, or don't we? Be yourself! Let's show them who's who in this part of the world!"

But she only shook her head. His moment of passion was gone. She knew that it was not her he really wanted, but to humiliate the rest. And although he continued to argue, cajole and bully her in turn, she persisted in her refusal. At last he leaped to his feet, jamming his hat on his head with a gesture at once dramatic and final.

"All right," he said. "All I wanted was to know where I stand. Now I know. Good night."

"Tom! Come back a minute."

But he went swinging along toward the barn, chaps rustling and spurs jingling, and as he went he whistled. Ten minutes later he was loping down the road on the Miller, in the general direction of Ursula.

She did not see him again until two days after the Fair was over.

Now and then some word of the doings in town filtered out to the ranch. Bill was brought out in a car one day, pale and sheepish, with a sprained ankle and a story of hard luck, but Tom it appeared was riding as if he wore shock absorbers and was up to the finals.

Herbert politely invited Kay to go in for the last day, and she as politely refused. Henry was able to turn over in his bed without yelping, and was planning to start East as soon as he could travel. And then on the evening of that last day the outfit came back, tired but triumphant, driving