Alice said sharply, 'I won't be long.'
Duff flapped his hand at her and disappeared.
18
'I'm not going to the post office. Art. No, really. What did you want to say?'
He drew her into the sitting room with an arm across her shoulders. 'I don't know how I'm going to say it, exactly,' he confessed. He turned her so that she faced him. 'Darling, you've put Innes in a state. Fve tried to be helpful.'
'What do you mean?' Alice felt choked and angry. She wanted to reject his help, whatever it was.
'You're going to marry him, aren't you?'
'That's up to him,' she said bitterly.
'He'll be all right.' Killeen spoke with a soft confidence.
Alice shook herself away from him. 'I don't know why you think you've got to interfere.'
'Interfere? Darling, I'm not. I'm helping.'
'Helping what?'
'To clear up a misunderstanding,' said Killeen, 'between you and Innes.' She was speechless, and he went on. 'Really, darling, I think you ought to be less hostile. It's costing me something.'
'Oh?' said Alice.
'I'm a little jealous,' he said.
Alice felt as if firecrackers were going off in the black back of her eyes, but she managed to laugh.
'You may laugh,' said Art Killeen, 'but you're darned sweet, Alice. I told him he was a lucky man.'
'What else did you tell him?' said Alice with an effort She wasn't angry any more.
'I convinced him that you meant the opposite of what you said.'
'That was clever.' Her voice shook a little.
'You said you were after his dough, darling, but actions speak louder than words, as I pointed out'
'What actions?'
'You can't be after the dough, sweet Alice. You didn't want him to sign that wilL'
'But . . .'
'He sees that, now.'
'Maybe I don't understand myself,' said Alice. As a matter of fact, she did feel all confused.
'I understand you, darling.'
Alice caught a glimpse of a scheme of things in which wheels went around within wheels, and one seemed mercenary for the purpose of seeming unmercenary, though on the next layer down . ..
'Besides that,' said Killeen, 'I had to convince him that you weren't in love with me.'
'Did he think ... I was?'
'I'm afraid he did there for a minute.'
'Wasn't that bright of Innes?' she said flatly and openly.
He chose to take it for sarcasm. 'Quite a brainstorm,' he said.
'As if there was any percentage,' Alice heard herself saying coolly, 'in that.'
His eye leaped to hers. She saw him come up to the very brink of an impulse, felt the surge of recklessness that almost carried him away. She saw it fail, too, come to the brink and not go over.
'I wanted to tell you,' he said lamely, 'but now I'd better get down to the post office. Innes would have a fit if he could see me dawdling.'
'Then don't dawdle,' she said.
He came rather near. 'I hope everything is going to be all right,' he said, with warmth left out of the wish.
'Do you, by any chance, mean the opposite of what you say?' asked Alice.
Light leaped in his eye. He bent and kissed her and made his exit without a curtain line.
A curious mmibness took hold of Alice. She didn't seem to be able to go over that little scene and analyze it. Her mind wanted to put it off. She had, besides, a sense of having been interrupted. There was something she had been in the middle of doing. Something absorbing. Mr. Duff.
It's that Indian! she thought. What's Duff saying to that Indian, I wonder.
Through the kitchen window she saw Duff and Mr. Johnson sitting on the back steps, side by side. Their eyes were fixed on the horizon. No duel this time. They gazed across the pit to the hills and distant trees. Mr. Johnson spat in the dust from time to time. Duff seemed to dream in the sun.
'I went down to the reservation yesterday,' he said lazily.
