.. her head of rich, dark hair touseled attractively. She was
reading a book. I caught the white gleam of one of her pretty legs where
the elastic on one side of her bloomers had slipped up.
Alone with her, a touch of my old almost paralytic shyness returned ...
but the pathway to my tent lay so near her hammock I would almost brush
against its side in passing....
She looked up. She gazed at me indefinitely, as if coming back from a
far dream to reality.
"Oh, Johnnie Gregory! You?" fingering her hair with flexible fingers
like a violinist trying his instrument.
"Yes!" I stopped abruptly and flushed.
"Did Jones like you?"
"I think he did."
"Jones is an eccentric ... but nine-tenths of the time he is right in
his contentions ... his moral indignations ... it is his spirit of no
compromise that defeats him."
With that she reached out one hand to me, with that pretty droop of the
left corner of her mouth, that already had begun to fascinate me....
"Help me up ... a hammock's a nice place to be in, but an awkward thing
to get out of."
I took her hand and helped her rise to a sitting posture.
"Ruth's in the little house typing ... Penton and Darrie are a-field
taking a walk."
I paused where I was. Mrs. Baxter stood directly in the pathway that led
to my tent. And the second act of _Judas_ had begun to burn in my brain,
during my vigorous walk back from Jones's shack.
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