“What jeopardizes either?”
“Your heartless, contemptible vanity, which tempts you to demand a homage and incense that should be offered only where it is due,—at another, and I grieve to add, a purer shrine.”
“Ah! My unpardonable sin consists in having braided my black locks, and made myself comely! If you will procure an authentic portrait of the Witch of Endor, I will do proper penance by likening my appearance thereunto. Poor little rose! Can’t you open your pink lips and cry peccavi? Come down, sole ally and accomplice of my heinous vanity, and plead for me, and make the amende honorable to this grim guardian of Miss Muriel’s peace!”
She snatched the drooping rose from her hair, and tossed it at his feet.
“Salome, you forget yourself!”
His stern displeasure rendered her reckless, and she continued,—
“True, sir. I did forget that the poor miller’s child had no right to obtrude her comeliness in the presence of the banker’s daughter. I confess my ‘high crime and misdemeanor’ against the pet of fortune, and await my condign punishment. Is it your sovereign will that I shear my shining locks like royal Berenice, and offer them in propitiation? Or, does it seem ‘good, meet, and your bounden duty,’ to have me promptly inoculated with small-pox, for the destruction of my skin, which is unjustifiably smoother and clearer than—”
“Hush, hush!”
He laid his hand over her lips, and, for a while, there was an awkward pause.