Desperation lent Maria Angelina sudden fire. "You must be mad, Signor!" she told him fiercely.
"And you madder. You don't think I'm going to stay"--he jerked his head backward--"out in the wet?"
"But naturally. You are a man. It is your place."
"My place--you little Wop! A man! I'd be a dead one." The words of a humorous lecturer smote his memory and with harsh merriment he quoted, "'Good-night, Miss Middleton, said I, as I buttoned her carefully into her tent and went out to sleep upon a cactus.' . . . None of that stuff for mine," and without more ado Johnny Byrd lowered his head to pass under the doorway.
"Ri-Ri, listen to me!" he demanded upon the threshold. "You're raving--loco--nuts! There's no harm in my huddling under the same roof with you--it's a damn necessity. I'm not going to hold hands and I'm not going to kiss you. If you've got any drawn swords you can lay their blades between us. You turn your face to the wall and forget all about it and I'll do the same."
"Got a dagger in your garter? . . . Ri-Ri, listen to me. You're absolutely wrong in the head. Be sensible. Have a heart. I'm going to get some rest."
"It does not matter what you say or what you intend. You do not need to reassure me that you will not kiss me, Signor. That will not happen again." Maria Angelina's voice was like ice. "But you are not coming within this place."
Tensely she confronted him. He loomed before her as a wolfish brute, seeking his comfort at this last cost of her pride. . . . But no man, she thought tragically, should ever say that he had spent the night within the same four walls.
She sprang forward, her hands outstretched, then shrank back.
She could not touch him. Not only the perception of the ludicrous folly of matching her strength against his withheld her, but some flaming fury against putting a hand upon a man who had so repudiated her.
Her brain grew alert. Suddenly very intent and collected she stepped aside and Johnny Byrd came in.
Close to the wall she pressed, edging nearer and nearer the door, and as he stumbled and fumbled with the blankets she gave a quick spring and flashed out.
Like mad she ran across the clearing, through a thicket, and out again and away.
On the instant he was after her; she heard his steps crashing behind her but she had the start of her swiftness and the speed of her desperation. Brambles meant nothing to her, nor the thickets nor branches. She flew on and on, lost in the darkness, his shouts growing fainter and fainter in her ears.