He was, indeed, as innocent as a puppy; he was just “seeing Etta home” again. And he had always seen her home before with such an innocence of tender passion, that once more the tenderness arose in him. It found its vent in his saying:
“You know you’ll catch cold if you let your hood fall back like that.”
“Then put it up for me,” she said saucily.
Her hood had fallen on to her shoulders, and in the March night her breasts gleamed. Both her hands were occupied with her skirts. He trembled—as he had been used to tremble—when his hands touched her warm and scented hair, whose filaments caressed his wrists. In the light of a lamp her eyes gleamed mockingly.
“Do you remember the riddle with the rude answer?” she asked suddenly, “about the hare. There was a hare in a pit, sixty feet deep, and there was no way out, and a greyhound was let into it. How did the hare escape. And the answer was: That’s the hare’s business.”
She had hooked herself on to his arm again.
“What’s that got to do with it?” he asked thinkingly.
“Oh,” she answered, “I was only thinking; it is the bare’s business, you know. That means that you can’t really get away from your past. It comes back again. Do you remember a French story called ’Toutes les Amoureuses’? ... about a man who had hundreds of adventures. And of each lady he kept a ribbon or a lock of hair, or a shoe-buckle—some trifle. And once a year he used to lock his door and take out these odds and ends—and remember—just remember! Well, Mr. Dudley Leicester, that’s a good thing to do. It’s an act of piety for one thing; it averts evil for another. It’s like touching for the evil chance. If you’d done that for me—for my sake, because you had a good slice of my life—if you had done it ... well! you’d not have been so desperately unhappy now.”
“I’m not unhappy,” he said, and he spoke the truth.
“Aren’t you?” she mocked him. “Aren’t you?”