“No—yes—” he answered. “Perhaps—I can’t say.”
“Well, I mustn’t ask, I suppose,” she said. “You’ve taught me not to, though its made me cry my eyes out sometimes. If you’re bad, dear, I don’t want you anything else—it’s like a man. He—he doesn’t want to take you from me, does he?”
She nestled her face, willy-nilly, between his unresisting hands.
“To take you?” he said distressfully. “His code isn’t mine, Molly. I daresay he’d like to. Like a man, quotha! It’s like a blockish boy, rather, to make a toy of love—a doll out of a goddess. He wouldn’t have done it.”
She uttered a faint cry.
“Then he does want to separate us!”
“How can he, little fool? He doesn’t know you, even.”
“O, you frightened me so! Love your Molly, Cherry!”
He had taught her early to call him “Chéri,” which, on her sweet fruitful lips, had become Cherry; and so her love had christened him. Kent was her county.
“I have shown my reverence for love,” he said sadly, “by desecrating its Host. I have broken open its tabernacle and eaten the sacred bread because it was forbidden. A greedy, blockish boy, Molly.”