For, in the first place, these proceedings seemed to him exceedingly impertinent, for what possible right did Clive imagine he had to come playing the fool like this, sighing in the dark and blowing kisses like a baby to its mammy?
And secondly, unless he were greatly mistaken, John Clive might just as sensibly and safely have dropped overboard from a ship in mid-Atlantic for a swim as come to indulge his sentimentalities in the Bittermeads garden at night.
“You silly ass!” he said in a voice that was very low, but very distinct and very full of an extreme disgust and anger.
Clive fairly leaped in the air with his surprise, and turned and made a sudden dash at the spot whence Dunn's voice had come, but where Dunn no longer was.
“What the blazes—?” he began, spluttering in ineffectual rage. “You—you—!”
“You silly ass!” Dunn repeated, no less emphatically than before.
Clive made another rush that a somewhat prickly bush very effectually stopped.
“You—who are you—where—what—how dare you?” he gasped as he picked himself up and tried to disentangle himself from the prickles.
“Don't make such a row,” said Dunn from a new direction. “Do you want to raise the whole neighbourhood? Haven't you played the fool enough? If you want to commit suicide, why can't you cut your throat quietly and decently at home, instead of coming alone to the garden at Bittermeads at night?”
There was a note of sombre and intense conviction in his voice that penetrated even the excited mind of the raging Clive.