“Didn’t I! I’d often wondered what it would be like to kiss Jack Meriden again, so your being away on your own affairs gave me a good opportunity.”
“You kissed him!” exclaimed Sid, in angry astonishment, all his masculine proprietorship in his face.
“Why not!” she answered, nodding her head affirmatively.
“You--kissed--him,” Sid repeated, grasping her wrists fiercely.
Rosamund shook herself free, with mocking laughter.
“Ah! there talks the man--the lord of creation. The man is to be allowed to go off and flirt with whom he pleases, but the woman, O no! While the man is engaged in these pleasing diversions, she must sit at home faithfully darning his socks. No, sir! I did kiss Jack Meriden, and it was a very nice kiss, too.”
“You did,” repeated Sid slowly, in an anguish of jealousy.
“You must remember, Sid,” she answered mockingly, “what a serious affair it was between us--quite a Judgment-Day affair. Those old memories die hard, as you, of all people, should know.”
“I only know that you--kissed--Jack--Meriden,” repeated Sid, rising to his feet; “and that I am going.”
He strode savagely across the lawn, making as if to leave the garden. Rosamund let him go some distance, and then called him back.
“Why should I come back?” he asked, sulkily.
“I want to tell you something,” she said in a caressing voice.
He came back to her side, and stood there.
“You must sit down. I can’t tell you that way.”
Sid sat down, with non-committal aloofness. She put her arm around his rigid shoulders, and whispered.
“You are the greatest goose that ever lived. I never kissed Jack Meriden. I love you--not as a man loves, but as a woman loves.”
“I love you the same way,” answered Sid, the storm-clouds suddenly swept from his face, “there is only one way of--loving. The other thing needs another name.”
And, with that, Rosamund snapped to the door of his cage forever.
Whenever I ought to be working especially hard at my desk in the middle of the woodland, where I have built myself a little log house for my books, and my pictures and my pen--because the household down at the bottom of the hill does not want a man indoors writing all day when there are all kinds of important domestic operations afoot, which, when he is there, have to be done softly, with hushed voices and muffled tread, lest the serenity of the great brain with the pen be ruffled--whenever, I say, I ought to be working especially hard up there in the wood, among the pines and the bracken and the dancing leaves and the whistle of birds that seem to call, “What a sin it is to be working on such a day!” there often comes a tiny figure and looks in at the window with three-year-old baby eyes, and watches the mysterious person there at the desk, with, for all her affected innocent look, a definite purpose of seduction in her baby heart. I know too well what she is up to. It is a day all aromatic sunshine, and she wants us to play truant together, hunting butterflies and wild flowers, instead of having to behave properly with nurse, and sitting there at that stupid desk.