In those days it had always irritated her, and set her small fists to
clenching in a childish antagonism. More than once she had answered it
with superior little, child-woman smiles which had sent him marching,
white of face and lip, back through the hedge gap, never realizing
herself that her own pique sprang from the belief that his promises of
conquest dealt only with material things--splendidly visioned, most
vaguely detailed conquests which set his eyes afire but seemed to hold
no place for the feminine of her. She had never understood that he,
with quite masculine bindness [Transcriber's note: blindness?], had
taken for granted her comprehension that each and every conquest was to
be solely a glorification of her, any more than she understood now why
his black discouragement awakened in her a sudden warmth as different
from her old perversity as the pulse in her throat was painful. And
yet she couldn't stifle that impulse. She giggled aloud. And when he
turned--when he wheeled and encountered her shining eyes, still wet and
brimming above the screen of his own handkerchief, she sensed
immediately that he was flushing as little, too-sensitive Steve had
flushed years before, when she had laughed at him less kindly.
The girl was not conscious of it; she had no actual realization yet of
how very deeply her unwilling readjustment of fundamental values had,
in the last twenty-four hours, undermined her hitherto unquestioning
acceptance of those inbred standards which, to all her world save
Miriam Burrell, were creed and code of conduct.
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