“So-ho!” growled he; “you can yet blush to be found out by your dog?”
I laughed, vexed, and a little embarrassed.
“O,” said he, “never mind! I am honoured in even that little rose of shame. You won’t grow it long.”
“Gogo,” I said, “how dare you?”
“Why,” said he, “as dogs dare, who love without respect, and see no more harm to serve a thief than a prince.”
I looked at him a moment, between tears and defiance.
“You are very unkind,” I said. “What is the good of my confessing anything to you, if you so distrust me?”
“Confessing?” said he, “the good? Why, because I have no legs to run away, and a man’s better judgment is always in his legs. My foolish heart is nearer the ground than most. Tread on it, thou Circe; and prove me less than half Ulysses. Confess to me—confess; and I will stay, and smile—and believe.”
“No,” I said, recovering my confidence. “I swear not to, unless you confess first. I asked you the other day how—how you came to lose them; and you put my question by, sir, and were dreadfully rude into the bargain. Very well, I am waiting to have you atone by answering it.”
I dropped into a chair, and he followed me, and squatted himself on the floor, a very abortion of passion, yet moving somehow in his grotesqueness. I kicked off my slippers, and put my feet into his hands—