"I hope so."
"Then," said she, coming to look at the great bars, with a fork in her hand, for she was in the middle of dishing up, "then, if you promise me always to come home by the road, and never through the coppice—you will do so, won't you?"
"Why should I?" I inquired, turning sharply to look at her.
"Because the coppice is so dark and lonely, and if—I say, if I should take it into my head to come and meet you sometimes, there would be no chance of my missing you." And so she looked at me and smiled, and, going back to her cooking, fell once more a-singing, the while I sat and watched her beneath my brows.
Surely, surely no woman whose heart was full of deceit could sing so blithely and happily, or look at one with such sweet candor in her eyes?
And yet the supper was a very ghost of a meal, for when I remembered the man who had watched and waited, the very food grew nauseous and seemed to choke me. "She's a Eve—a Eve!" rang a voice in my ear; "Eve tricked Adam, didn't she, and you ain't a better man nor Adam; she's a Eve—a Eve!"
"Peter, you eat nothing."
"Yes, indeed!" said I, staring unseeingly down at my plate, and striving to close my ears against the fiendish voice.
"And you are very pale!"
I shrugged my shoulders.