Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/325

 there was going to be any morning, anyway. Did n't you feel queer, at all?"

Fred squinted above his smoking cup. "Well, I am never strong for getting up before the sun. The world looks unfurnished. When I first lit the fire and had a square look at you, I thought I 'd got the wrong girl. Pale, grim—you were a sight!"

Thea leaned back into the shadow of the rock room and warmed her hands over the coals. "It was dismal enough. How warm these walls are, all the way round; and your breakfast is so good. I 'm all right now, Fred."

"Yes, you 're all right now." Fred lit a cigarette and looked at her critically as her head emerged into the sun again. "You get up every morning just a little bit handsomer than you were the day before. I 'd love you just as much if you were not turning into one of the loveliest women I 've ever seen; but you are, and that 's a fact to be reckoned with." He watched her across the thin line of smoke he blew from his lips. "What are you going to do with all that beauty and all that talent, Miss Kronborg?"

She turned away to the fire again. "I don't know what you 're talking about," she muttered with an awkwardness which did not conceal her pleasure.

Ottenburg laughed softly. "Oh, yes, you do! Nobody better! You 're a close one, but you give yourself away sometimes, like everybody else. Do you know, I 've decided that you never do a single thing without an ulterior motive." He threw away his cigarette, took out his tobacco-pouch and began to fill his pipe. "You ride and fence and walk and climb, but I know that all the while you 're getting somewhere in your mind. All these things are instruments; and I, too, am an instrument." He looked up in time to intercept a quick, startled glance from Thea. "Oh, I don't mind," he chuckled; "not a bit. Every woman, every interesting woman, has ulterior motives, many of 'em less creditable than yours. It 's your constancy