The girl continued-- "What made you stay here instead of going on with the Kernel?
There was suthin' else besides your wanting to make that Stanner take water.

What is it ?" A light sense of the propinquity of beauty, of her confidence, of their isolation, of the eloquence of her dark eyes, at first tempted Hale to a reply of simple gallantry; a graver consideration of the same circumstances froze it upon his lips.
"I don't know," he returned awkwardly.
"Well, I'll tell you," she said.

"You didn't cotton to the Kernel and Rawlins much more than you did to Stanner.

They ain't your kind." In his embarrassment Hale blundered upon the thought he had honorably avoided.
"Suppose," he said, with a constrained laugh, "I had stayed to see you." "I reckon I ain't your kind, neither," she replied promptly.

There was a momentary pause when she rose and walked to the chimney.