She ignored the exception.

"I can't express it exactly. The people here are just like people
everywhere else--most of them. But the country looks so big and unoccupied.
And blue mountains are so alluring. There might be anything beyond them {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}
adventures, opportunities.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

This idea was a bit too rarefied for Ramon, but he could agree about the
mountains.

"It's a fine country," he assented. "For those that own it."

"It's just a feeling I have about it," she went on, trying to express her
own half-formulated idea. "But then I have that feeling about life in
general, and there doesn't seem to be anything in it. I mean the feeling
that it's full of thrilling things, but somehow you miss them all."

"I have felt something like that," he admitted. "But I never could say
it."

This discovery of an idea in common seemed somehow to bring them closer
together. His hand tightened gently about her arm; almost unconsciously he
drew her toward him. But she seemed to be all absorbed in the discussion.

"You have no right to complain," she told him. "A man can do something
about it."

"Yes," he agreed, speaking a reflection without stopping to put it in
conventional language. "It must be hell to be a woman {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} excuse me {~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~} I
mean.{~HORIZONTAL ELLIPSIS~}"

"Don't apologize. It is--just that. A man at least has a fighting chance to
escape boredom. But they won't even let a woman fight. I wish I were a
man."

"Well; I don't," he asserted with warmth, unconsciously tightening his
hold upon her arm. "I can't tell you how glad I am that you're a woman."

"Oh, are you?" She looked up at him with challenging, provocative eyes.

For an instant a kiss was imminent. It hovered between them like an
invisible fairy presence of which they both were sweetly aware, and no one
else.

"Hey there! all you spooners!" came a jovial and irreverent voice from the
vicinity of the camp fire. "Come and eat."

The moment was lost; the fairy presence gone. She turned with a little
laugh, and they went in silence back to the fire. They were last to enter
the circle of ruddy light, and all eyes were upon them. She was pink and
self-conscious, looking at her feet and picking her way with exaggerated
care. He was proud and elated. This, he knew, would couple their names in
gossip, would make her partly his.

CHAPTER IX