atmosphere compounded of the sun and wind and dust of the open
road. And yet, if such a clean, healthy woman as she went in for
naked women crouching on her piano, it must be all right. Dede
made it all right. She could come pretty close to making
anything all right. Besides, he didn’t understand culture
anyway.
She reentered the room, and as she crossed it to her chair, he
admired the way she walked, while the bronze slippers were
maddening.
“I’d like to ask you several questions,” he began immediately
“Are you thinking of marrying somebody?”
She laughed merrily and shook her head.
“Do you like anybody else more than you like me?–that man at the
‘phone just now, for instance?”
“There isn’t anybody else. I don’t know anybody I like well
enough to marry. For that matter, I don’t think I am a marrying
woman. Office work seems to spoil one for that.”
Daylight ran his eyes over her, from her face to the tip of a
bronze slipper, in a way that made the color mantle in her
cheeks. At the same time he shook his head sceptically.
“It strikes me that you’re the most marryingest woman that ever
made a man sit up and take notice. And now another question.
You see, I’ve just got to locate the lay of the land. Is there
anybody you like as much as you like me?”
But Dede had herself well in hand.
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190
“That’s unfair,” she said. “And if you stop and consider, you
will find that you are doing the very thing you
disclaimed–namely,
nagging. I refuse to answer any more of your
questions. Let us talk about other things. How is Bob?”
Half an hour later, whirling along through the rain on Telegraph
Avenue toward Oakland, Daylight smoked one of his brown-paper
cigarettes and reviewed what had taken place. It was not at all
bad, was his summing up, though there was much about it that was
baffling. There was that liking him the more she knew him and at
the same time wanting to marry him less. That was a puzzler.
But the fact that she had refused him carried with it a certain
elation. In refusing him she had refused his thirty million
dollars. That was going some for a ninety dollar-a-month
stenographer who had known better ties. She wasn’t after money,
that was patent. Every woman he had encountered had seemed
willing to swallow him down for the sake of his money. Why, he
had doubled his fortune, made fifteen millions, since the day she
first came to work for him, and behold, any willingness to marry
him she might have possessed had diminished as his money had
increased.
“Gosh!” he muttered. “If I clean up a hundred million on this
land deal she won’t even be on speaking terms with me.”
But he could not smile the thing away. It remained to baffle
him, that enigmatic statement of hers that she could more easily
have married the Elam Harnish fresh from the Klondike than the
present Elam Harnish. Well, he concluded, the thing to do was
for him to become more like that old-time Daylight who had come
down out of the North to try his luck at the bigger game. But
that was impossible. He could not set back the flight of time.
Wishing wouldn’t do it, and there was no other way. He might as
well wish himself a boy again.
Another satisfaction he cuddled to himself from their interview.
He had heard of stenographers before, who refused their
employers, and who invariably quit their positions immediately
afterward. But Dede had not even hinted at such a thing. No
matter how baffling she was, there was no nonsensical silliness
about her. She was level headed. But, also, he had been
level-headed and was partly responsible for this. He hadn’t
taken advantage of her in the office. True, he had twice
overstepped the bounds, but he had not followed it up and made a
practice of it. She knew she could trust him. But in spite of
all this he was confident that most young women would have been
silly enough to resign a position with a man they had turned
down. And besides, after he had put it to her in the right
light, she had not been silly over his sending her brother to
Germany.
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191
“Gee!” he concluded, as the car drew up before his hotel. “If
I’d only known it as I do now, I’d have popped the question the
first day she came to work. According to her say-so, that would
have been the proper moment. She likes me more and more, and the
more she likes me the less she’d care to marry me! Now what do
youbthink of that? She sure must be fooling.”
CHAPTER XIX
Once again, on a rainy Sunday, weeks afterward, Daylight
proposed to Dede. As on the first time, he restrained himself
until his hunger for her overwhelmed him and swept him away in
his red automobile to Berkeley. He left the machine several
blocks away and proceeded to the house on foot. But Dede was
out, the landlady’s daughter told him, and added, on second
thought, that she was out walking in the hills. Furthermore, the
young lady directed him where Dede’s walk was most likely to
extend.
Daylight obeyed the girl’s instructions, and soon the street he
followed passed the last house and itself ceased where began the
first steep slopes of the open hills. The air was damp with the
on-coming of rain, for the storm had not yet burst, though the
rising wind proclaimed its imminence. As far as he could see,
there was no sign of Dede on the smooth, grassy hills. To the
right, dipping down into a hollow and rising again, was a large,
full-grown eucalyptus grove. Here all was noise and movement,
the lofty, slender trunked trees swaying back and forth in the
wind and clashing their branches together. In the squalls, above
all the minor noises of creaking and groaning, arose a deep
thrumming note as of a mighty harp. Knowing Dede as he did,
Daylight was confident that he would find her somewhere in this
grove where the storm effects were so pronounced. And find her
he did, across the hollow and on the exposed crest of the
opposing slope where the gale smote its fiercest blows.
There was something monotonous, though not tiresome, about the
way Daylight proposed. Guiltless of diplomacy subterfuge, he was
as direct and gusty as the gale itself. had time neither for
greeting nor apology.
“It’s the same old thing,” he said. “I want you and I’ve come
for
you. You’ve just got to have me, Dede, for the more I think
about it the more certain I am that you’ve got a Sneaking liking
for me that’s something more than just Ordinary liking. And you
don’t dast say that it isn’t; now dast you?”
He had shaken hands with her at the moment he began speaking, and
he had continued to hold her hand. Now, when she did not answer,
she felt a light but firmly insistent pressure as of his drawing
her to him. Involuntarily, she half-yielded to him, her desire
Burning Daylight
192
for the moment stronger than her will. Then suddenly she drew
herself away, though permitting her hand still to remain in his.
“You sure ain’t afraid of me?” he asked, with quick compunction.
“No.” She smiled woefully. “Not of you, but of myself.”
“You haven’t taken my dare,” he urged under this encouragement.
“Please, please,” she begged. “We can never marry, so don’t let
us discuss it.”
“Then I copper your bet to lose.” He was almost gay, now, for
success was coming faster than his fondest imagining. She liked
him, without a doubt; and without a doubt she liked him well
enough to let him hold her hand, well enough to be not repelled
by the nearness of him.
She shook her head. “No, it is impossible. You would lose your
bet.”
For the first time a dark suspicion crossed Daylight’s mind–a
clew
that explained everything.
“Say, you ain’t been let in for some one of these secret
marriages
have you?”
The consternation in his voice and on his face was too much for
her, and her laugh rang out, merry and spontaneous as a burst of
joy from the throat of a bird.
Daylight knew his answer, and, vexed with himself decided that
action was more efficient than speech. So he stepped between her
and the wind and drew her so that she stood close in the shelter
of him. An unusually stiff squall blew about them and thrummed
overhead in the tree-tops and both paused to listen. A shower of
flying leaves enveloped them, and hard on the heel of the wind
came driving drops of rain. He looked down on her and on her