She began at once, as intelligent humanity always does, to explain away what she did not understand, supposing by that means that she could do away with its existence.
"I think you are ill, Bart," she said quickly.

"It looks to me as if you were in for a bout of chills; and enough to give it to you too, hanging about in the woods all night." He drew a chair close to the table and sat down beside her.
"There isn't any chills in the swamps about here," he said; "they are as wholesome as dry land is." She saw by this that he had no intention of upbraiding her with his fall, or of proclaiming the object of his visit.
She wanted to rouse him into telling her something.
"I heard them saying something about you to-day that I didn't believe a bit.

I heard you were in the saloon drinking." He took hold of the end of her seam, passed his finger along it as if examining the fabric and the stitches.

"I took one glass," he said, with the curious quiet gravity which lay to-night like a spell upon all his words and actions.
"Well," she said cheerily, "I don't believe in a man making a slave of himself, not to take a glass when he wants it just because he sometimes makes a beast of himself by taking more than he ought." "If you choose to think black is white, Ann, it will not make it that way." "That's true," she replied compliantly; "and you've got more call to know than I have, for I've never 'been there.'" "God forbid!" he said with sudden intensity.

All the habits of thought of the last year put strength into his words.