“Is it wounded?” she asked.
“No, I think it is a tame one, escaped from a farm or a cottage near us, I expect.”
Kate crept after it on hands and knees and it let her approach. She offered it the core of an apple she had just eaten. The rabbit took it and bit her finger. Then Kate caught it by the ears. It squealed but Kate held it to her bosom with delight, and the rabbit soon rested there if not with delight at least with ease. It was warm against her breast, it was delicious to feel it there, to pull its ears and caress its fat flanks, but as she was doing this she suddenly saw that its coat was infested with fleas. She dropped the rabbit with a scream of disgust and it rushed into the thicket.
“Come here,” said Masterman to her, “let me search you, this is distressing.”
She knelt down before him and in spite of her wriggling he reassured her.
“It’s rather a nice blouse,” he said.
“I don’t care for it. I shall not wear it again. I shall sell it to someone or give it to them.”
“I would love to take it from you stitch by stitch.”
With an awkward movement of her arm she thrust at his face, crying loudly, “No, how dare you speak to me like that!”
“Is it very daring?” For a moment he saw her clenched hands, detestably bloodless, a symbol of roused virtue: but at once her anger was gone, Kate was contrite and tender. She touched his face with her white fingers softly as the settling of a moth. “O, why did we come here?”