“Highwaymen don’t exist any longer,” Arthur objected. “All the jolly things have disappeared from the world—war and highwaymen and pirates and troubadours and crusaders and maypoles and the Inquisition. Everything.”
Gradually Sylvia learned from Arthur how much of what she had been reading was mere invention, and in the first bitterness of disillusionment she wished to renounce books forever; but Arthur dissuaded her from doing that, and they used to read simultaneously the same books so as to be able to discuss them during their long walks. They became two romantics born out of due season, two romantics that should have lived a century ago and that now bewailed the inability of the modern world to supply what their adventurous souls demanded.
Arthur was inclined to think that Sylvia had much less cause to repine than he; the more tales she told him of her life, the more tributes of envy he paid to her good fortune. He pointed out that Monkley scarcely differed from the highwayman of romance; nor did he doubt but that if all his enterprises could be known he would rival Dick Turpin himself. Sylvia agreed with all he said, but she urged the inequality of her own share in the achievement. What she wanted was something more than to sit at home and enjoy fruits in the stealing of which she had played no part. She wanted none of Arthur’s love unless he were prepared to face the problem of living life at its fullest in company with her. She would let him kiss her sometimes, because, unhappily, it seemed that even very young men were infected with this malady, and that if deprived of this odious habit they were liable to lose determination and sink into incomprehensible despondency. At the same time Sylvia made Arthur clearly understand that she was yielding to his weakness, not to her own, and that, if he wished to retain her compassion, he must prove that the devotion of which he boasted was vital to his being.
“You mustn’t just kiss me,” Sylvia warned him, “because it’s easy. It’s very difficult, really, because it’s very difficult for me to let you do it. I have to wind myself up beforehand just as if I were going to pull out a loose tooth.”
Arthur gazed at her with wide-open, liquid eyes; his mouth trembled. “You say such cruel things,” he murmured.
Sylvia punched him as hard as she could. “I won’t be stared at like that. You look like a cow when you stare at me like that. Buck up and think what we’re going to do.”
“I’m ready to do anything,” Arthur declared, “as long as you’re decent to me. But you’re such an extraordinary girl. One moment you burst into tears and put your head on my shoulder, and the next moment you’re punching me.”
“And I shall punch you again,” Sylvia said, fiercely, “if you dare to remind me that I ever cried in front of you. You weren’t there when I cried.”
“But I was,” he protested.
“No, you weren’t. You were only there like a tree or a cloud.”