“See what you like,” I replied, furiously, “but don’t bother me with it. I’ve nothing to do with your fancies.”
“Oh, very well,” he said, coolly; “I don’t want to interfere, I’m sure.”
I bounced past him and strode out of the yard. My blood was humming in my veins; the sunny street looked all glazed with a shining gray. I walked on and on, scarcely knowing whither I went. Presently I climbed St. Catherine’s hill and flung myself down on the summit. Below me, a quarter of a mile away, the old city lay in the hollow cup of its down. Who, of all its 17,000 souls, could ever stir my pulses as the little stranger from the distant shadowy forest could? We had no forests round Winton. Perhaps if we had the spirit of the trees would have colored my life, too, so that I might have scorned “the blind bow-god’s butt shaft.”
No doubt I was young to make such capital out of a little boyish disappointment. Do you think so? Then to you I must not appeal. Oh, my friend! We are not all jack-o’-lanterns at 17, and the fire of unrequited affection may burn fiercer in the pure air of youth than in the vitiated atmosphere of manhood. Anyhow believe me that to me my misery was very real and dreadful. Think only, you who have plucked the fruit and found it bitter—you whose disenchantment of life did not begin till life itself was waning—what it must be to feel hopeless at that tender age.
All day long I lay on the hill or wandered about the neighboring downs, and it was not till the shadows of the trees were stretching that I made up my mind to return and face out the inevitable.
I was parched and feverish, and the prospect of a plunge in the river on my way home came to me with a little lonely thrill as of solace to my unhappiness.
There was a deep pool at a bend of the stream, not far from where Zyp and I had sat yesterday afternoon (was it only yesterday?) which we three were much in the habit of frequenting on warm evenings; and thither I bent my steps. This part of the water lay very private and solitary, and was only to be reached by trespassing from the road through a pretty thick-set blackthorn hedge—a necessity to its enjoyment which, I need not say, was an attraction to us.
As I wriggled through our individual “run” in the hedge and, emerging on the other side, raised my face, I saw that a naked figure was already seated by the side of the running pool, which I was not long in identifying as Modred’s.
I hesitated. What reason had I for hobnobbing with mine enemy, as, in the bitterness of my heart, I called him? I could not as yet speak to him naturally, I felt, or meet him without resentment. Where was the object in complicating matters? I turned, on the thought, to go, and again hesitated. Should he see me before I had made my escape, would he not attribute it to embarrassment on my part and crow triumphant over my discomfiture? Ah, why did I not act on my first impulse? Why, why? The deeps of perdition must resound with that forlorn little word.
When a second time the good resolve came to me, it was too late. He rose and saw me and, under his shading hand, even at that distance, I could mark the silent grin of mockery on his face. I walked deliberately toward him, my hands in my pockets, my cap shading my eyes.