But it wasn't merely that he came arrayed in this outer shell of affluence and prosperity. It was more that there was a sense of triumph in his heart which he couldn't possibly conceal. And I wasn't slow to realize what it meant. I was a down-and-outer now, and at his mercy. He could have his way with me, without any promise of protest. And whatever he might have done, or might yet do, it was ordained that I in my meekness should bow to the yoke. All that I must remember was that he stood my lord and master. I had made my foolish little struggle to be mistress of my own destiny, and now that I had failed, and failed utterly, I must bend to whatever might be given to me.
"It's hard luck, Chaddie," he said, with a pretense at being sympathetic. But there was no real sorrow in his eye as he stood there surveying my devastated ranch.
"Nix on that King Cophetua stuff!" I curtly and vulgarly proclaimed.
"Just what do you mean?" he asked, studying my face.
"Kindly can the condescension stuff!" I repeated, taking a wayward satisfaction out of shocking him with the paraded vulgarity of my phrasing.
"That doesn't sound like you," he said, naturally surprised, I suppose, that I didn't melt into his arms.
"Why not?" I inquired, noticing that he no longer cared to meet my eye.
"Well, some man has said that a hard soil makes a hard race," I retorted, with a glance about at my ruined wheatlands. "Did you have a pleasant time in Chicago?"
"I wasn't in Chicago," he promptly protested.
"Then that woman lied, after all," I remarked, with a lump of Scotch granite where my heart ought to have been. For I could see by his face that he knew, without hesitation, the woman I meant.
"Isn't that an unnecessarily harsh word?" he asked, trying, of course, to shield her to the last. And if he had not exactly winced, he had done the next thing to it.
"What would _you_ call it?" I countered. It wouldn't have taken a microphone, I suppose, to discover the hostility in my tone. "And would it be going too far to inquire just where you were?" I continued as I saw he had no intention of answering my first question.
"I was at the Coast," he said, compelling himself to meet my glance.
"I'm sorry that I cut your holiday short," I told him.