"Oh, you caricature of Hercules!" she jeered at him. "Tell me, have you ever worn decent clothes in your life?"
"Sometimes. I have to squeeze into regimentals on occasions—or into a frock-coat. You wouldn't know me—I look a regular freak."
"H'm! and what do you think you look like now?"
"Ariel shouldn't mock at Caliban," he retorted gaily.
"Even when Caliban throws Ariel's portrait out of the window." She pointed to the empty place on the table. "Have I sunk so far below your thought of me, Major Tristram?"
He became serious in a moment, but without embarrassment. She had a sudden pleasure in him as he came and stood beside her—in his bigness, in his sheer unconsciousness of himself and his strength. She felt oddly compassionate, too—the awestruck compassion of a Brünnhilde for a young Siegfried.
"No," he said. "But I was a boy, at least, in thought and feeling—and you were a boy's dream. Now I am a man and you are a reality. It would have been an impertinence of me to have kept you."
She shook her head.
"There's more in it than that, Tristram Sahib."
"Yes," he assented gravely. "A great deal more."