Suddenly she looked down with an air of mock surprise. "What is this?" she cried, lifting one of Dave's fingers and letting it fall. "Why, it looks like your hand!"
"I wonder how that could have got there!"
Dave, finding himself unequal to persiflage, made no reply. She nestled up to him a little and sighed. She liked it. She had not the slightest idea that there was anything out of the way in it. Why should she? Morals, as we understand them, she had never been taught. They slowly approached the wagon, which during the day had been dragged to a less conspicuous but more distant locality.
Ah, Molly, Molly, those wings are very tired!
At the moment when Kelly first pressed the girl to him, he experienced a sudden lessening of her charm. It was not that she was less feminine, or that, in his eyes, she had lost any moral excellence by her easy surrender. Dave had probably as rudimentary ideas of the finer moralities as Molly herself. But one very definite element of her attraction had been given up--that of mystery, of remoteness, of difference between herself and him. She was no longer a creature of a wonderful and other sphere; she had become the female of his species.
All this was subtle and slight and quite unappreciated and unanalyzed by Dave himself. But the keen intuition of the girl discovered it. She felt the difference. Suddenly she became aware of the fact that whatever a woman gives to a man takes something from her attraction, and adds something to his. With the discovery, she resolutely put his hand away.
"That's enough of that," she said in the sensible voice which some women use so effectually.
Dave, unwilling to let the sensation go before he had drained it, attempted to seize her by force. She slipped away and ran like a deer to her wagon, gleaming white through the darkness. Dave sprang in pursuit. At the instant Peter, who had followed unperceived, leaped with a growl and fastened his teeth into Dave's cowhide boot. The miner paused a moment undecided, and then, his natural good nature coming to his rescue, he laughed. An answering laugh echoed from the direction of the wagon.
"That's a pretty trick," he called, trying to disengage Peter's jaws. Peter shook his head savagely and growled.