At the table, Kilgariff observed that, apart from the “coffee” made of parched rye, neither Dorothy nor Evelyn took anything but fruit. There was a cold ham on the table, and the customary loaf of hot bread, but the two women partook of neither. When Kilgariff half suggested, half asked, the reason for their abstemiousness, Dorothy replied:— “We Virginia women are saving for the army every ounce of food we can. So far as possible, we eat nothing that can be converted into rations. Arthur compels Evelyn and me to take a little meat and a little bread or some potatoes for dinner. He thinks that necessary to our health. But for the rest, we do very well on fruits, vegetables, and other perishable things, don’t we, Byrdie?” “Oh, yes, indeed. For my own part, I like it. I have had other experiences in living on a restricted diet. Once I had nothing to eat for three or four months except meat, so in going without meat now I am only bringing up the average.” Kilgariff looked up in surprise. “For three months or more you had no food but meat!” he exclaimed. “No bread, no starchy food of any kind?” “Nothing whatever. There weren’t even roots or grass there to be chewed. The Indians often live in that way. Never mind that. At another time I lived for a month in winter almost exclusively on raw potatoes, with only now and then a bit of salt beef.” “May I ask why you did not cook the potatoes? If it was winter, surely you had fire.” “Oh, yes, plenty of it. But there was scurvy, and raw potatoes are best for that.” “Are they? I never knew that.” “Oh, yes. But for eating their potatoes raw, the people in the lumber-camps would never survive the winter. But I don’t want to talk about those things. I didn’t mean to. Perhaps I’ll put them all into another book that I’m writing just for Dorothy to read and nobody else in all the world.” She looked at Dorothy as she spoke, and Dorothy understood. This was the first she had heard of the proposed “book.” It was the first reference Evelyn had made to their talk on the day when she had given her hostess an exhibition of bareback riding. Kilgariff did not understand. Yet, taken in connection with other things that Evelyn had said to him during his former stay at Wyanoke, what she now said seemed at least to lift a little corner of the thick curtain of reserve which shrouded her life-history. “She has lived,” he thought, “among the wildest of wild Indians, and she has passed at least one winter in some northern lumber-camp. I wonder why.” He was not destined as yet to get any reply to the question in his mind. XXII ALONE IN THE PORCH WHEN Kilgariff asked Evelyn to go with him to the front porch, telling her he had an important matter to discuss with her, she showed a momentary embarrassment. She quickly controlled it, but not so quickly that it escaped her companion’s recognition.