“I’m crying for the moon,” he chanted, “and because she won’t come down to me I’m calling her names—saying that she’s a Gorgonzola cheese flying through the heavens.”
“My Lord,” laughed the golden woman—she pronounced it Looard, in her most foreign accent; “what an imagination you have!”
“Jump down,” urged the Faun Man; “I’ll catch you, little Eve. I’d catch you and carry you anywhere.”
She thought and slowly shook her head, as if she had been considering his suggestion as a feasible, if unconventional, plan of descent. “I’d rather trust the stairs.”
“You’d rather trust anything than trust me,” he said ruefully; “but I don’t care, so long as you do come down.” She was leaving the window, when she turned back. “What was that silly song you were singing?”
He answered her promptly. “Words by Shelley. Accompanied by Lorenzo Arran. Title, ‘A Bloke and ‘is ‘Arriet.’ Scene laid in London. All rights reserved.” She pulled a face, exceedingly provocative and naughty. “Words by Shelley, indeed! But I can believe all the rest.”
She vanished.
The Faun Man turned to Peter. “You see, young fellow, it’s as I told you. Love’s always like that. It comes to a window and looks down at you. You hold out your arms to it and say, I want you.’ Love came to the window that you might say that; but the moment you say it, love shakes its head. If you told it to walk decently down the stairs to you, it would immediately fling itself over the sill and toboggan down the thatch. You’re fool enough to say to it, ‘Slide down the thatch,’ and it immediately walks decently down the stairs. If I were you, Peter, I’d never fall in love with anybody.”
Then Peter surprised himself; he mimicked something he had just heard. “My Looard!” he said, “I’m never going to.”
The Faun Man held his sides and threw back his head, laughing loudly. That was how the golden woman found him when she came with her arm about Kay’s neck. She halted on the path, six feet away, smiling at him across the barricade of flowers. She cuddled the little girl closer to her. “Aren’t men funny, Kay?” And then, slanting her face and stooping with her neck, “Lorie, you queer boy, what’s the matter now?”