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But Sylvia refused to respond to this. The pagan in her nature reasserted itself, and she felt resentful of Runyon's affable attitude toward Harboro. The attraction which she and Runyon exerted toward each other was not a thing to be brought within the scope of a conventionally friendly relationship. Its essence was of the things furtive and forbidden.
Harboro and the General Manager were talking, Harboro's heavy tones alternating at unequal intervals with the crisp, penetrating voice of the General Manager a voice dry with years, but vital nevertheless. After a time the horses in the carriage broke into a rhythmic trot. In the darkness Runyon's eyes gleamed with satisfaction.
Opening his glove-box, Rand took out the two percussion revolvers and shoved them under his trench coat, one on either side, pulling up the belt to hold them in place. As he went into the roadhouse, he felt like Damon Runyon's Twelve-Gun Tweeney. He found Ritter in the last booth, engaged in finishing a bottle of beer. Rand ordered Bourbon and plain water, and Ritter ordered another beer.
She became exhilarated by a number of things. The freedom of movement, the occasional touch of her knee against Runyon's, the mysterious vagueness of the road, now that the moon had gone down. Perhaps they both forgot themselves for a time, and then Sylvia checked her horse with a laugh in which there was a sound of dismay. "We ought to wait for them to catch up," she said.
It fell when the door opened quietly and Harboro came into the room. He closed the door behind him and regarded them strangely as if his face had died, but as if his eyes retained the power of seeing. Sylvia drew away from Runyon, not spasmodically, but as if she were moving in her sleep. She left one hand on Runyon's sleeve. She was regarding Harboro with an expression of hopeless bewilderment.
I quoted to her Damon Runyon's verses: We are ants upon a mountain, but we're leavin' of our dent, An' our teeth-marks bitin' scenery they will show the way we went; We're a liftin' half-creation, and we're changin' it around, Just to suit our playful purpose when we're diggin' in the ground. "You Americans take the cake," Blythe admitted. "You never tire of doing big things."
Wayne was reproaching him for not having come sooner. He should have been there for the beginning, he said. And Runyon's response was characteristic enough, perhaps: "Everything is always beginning." There was gay laughter at this, though the meaning of it must have been obscure to all save Sylvia. The words sounded like a song to her. It was a song she had wished to sing herself.
She might have derived a great deal of tumultuous joy from Runyon's friendship for her if it could have been manifested in secret, but she could feel only a sense of duplicity and shame if his friendship included Harboro, too. The wolf does not curry favor with the sheep-dog when it hungers for a lamb. Such was her creed. In brief, Sylvia had received her training in none of the social schools.
There was neither movement nor sound save the frenzied dance of dust and the whistle of winds which seemed shunted southward from the north star. Runyon's hand travelled soothingly from Sylvia's shoulder to her cheek. He held her to him with a tender, eloquent pressure. He was the man, whose duty it was to protect; and she was the woman, in need of protection.
"Well, then, I don't want to marry him," continued Sylvia. Harboro ignored her. "What do you say, Runyon?" "In view of her unwillingness, and the fact that she is already married " "Runyon!" The word was pronounced almost like a snarl. Runyon had adopted a facetious tone which had stirred Harboro's fury. Something of the resiliency of Runyon's being vanished at that tone in the other man's voice.
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