The act struck Mr.Bowers as a possible return of her former nervous weakness.

Her attention must at once be distracted at any cost--even conversation.
"Perhaps," he began, with sudden and appalling lightness, "I'm a-talkin' to Mrs.McFadden ?" "No," said the woman, abstractedly.
"Then it must be Mrs.Delatour?
There are only two township lots on that crossroad." "My name IS Delatour," she said, somewhat wearily.
Mr.Bowers was conversationally stranded.

He was not at all anxious to know her name, yet, knowing it now, it seemed to suggest that there was nothing more to say.

He would, of course, have preferred to ask her if she had read the poetry about the Underbrush, and if she knew the poetess, and what she thought of it; but the fact that she appeared to be an "eddicated" woman made him sensitive of displaying technical ignorance in his manner of talking about it.

She might ask him if it was "subjective" or "objective"-- two words he had heard used at the Debating Society at Mendocino on the question, "Is poetry morally beneficial ?" For a few moments he was silent.