Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/186

 everything you say seems so everlastingly right. But then I find afterward that my mind hasn't really surrendered at all. My opinions are just bottled up in me, and then something, something like this wretched appearance of Blakeley here, knocks the top off, and I erupt like Vesuvius on a rampage. The trouble is in part that in your large way you take no account of little things, while a woman's life is mostly made of little things."

"You're one little thing that I take account of, Fay," he teased, eyeing her fondly, coaxingly. "But you see how it is. Business has to go on, and I have to give the wheel a kick once in a while. Most natural thing in the world for you to take Blakeley the way you did. It was my fault entirely for not breaking it to you. Stood it like a thoroughbred is what you did, too. I was proud of you, every minute you were breaking your heart in here while I was breaking mine out there by concentrating on the job. Besides, it's all over now for the day."

"Let's say it is," proposed Fay, unwilling to spoil the day. Hopeful, forgiving, and impulsive, she put up her lips sweetly.

He snatched her in his arms and tried his own special treatment for tear-stains, but in the end it was found that cold water did the work better. Soon they were in their hiking clothes,