Yet there was a vague lack in him somewhere. He just failed to come up to her ideal of what a man should be. Wherein lay this intangible lack?
Suddenly they emerged from the woods and struck the highway, and in another moment they were in Enterprise.
Not a breath of life was anywhere visible. Although it was six o’clock, not a wreath of smoke curled upward from any chimney. They rode through the sleeping town in silence.
"Now here," said Moultrie, "is a very remarkable town. It is, I may say, the only town in the world which is completely finished. Most towns grow, but not a nail has been driven in Enterprise, to my knowledge, since I was born. This town is perfectly satisfactory to its inhabitants _just as it is_!"
Against her will Carolina laughed. His tone was irresistible.
"Ought you to make fun of your own--your home town?" she asked.
"My more than that! Enterprise yields me my bread--sometimes."
Carolina looked at him. He pointed with his whip at the shed on the railroad platform.
"I am telegraph operator there six months in the year. I teach a country school in winter."
If he had struck her in the face with that same riding-whip, the red would not have flamed into Carolina’s cheeks with more sudden fury. She dug her spurless heel into Araby’s side, and the mare jumped with a swerve which would have unseated most riders. Moultrie looked at her in swift admiration, but she would not look at him. She struck her horse, and, with a mighty stride, Araby got the lead and kept it for a mile, even from Scintilla. Then the man overtook her and reached out and laid a hand on Carolina’s bridle hand, and looked deep into her eyes and said:
"Why did you do that? Why did you try to escape from me? Don’t you know that you _never can_?"
And all the time Carolina’s heart was beating heavily against her side, and her brain was spinning out the question over and over, over and over:
"Oh, how can he? How can he be satisfied with that? How can he endure himself!"
It was not the lack of money, it was the lack of ambition in the man at her side, which stung her pride until it bled.
"Better go West on a cattle ranch," she thought, with bitter passion. "Better hunt wolves for the government. Better take the trail with the Indians than to lie down and rot in such a manner! And _such_ a man!"