“Never.”
“Well, it’s a good thing there’s no necessity. I had to, you see. People even face pythons, when they must. And there’s always the fun of killing them.”
She shuddered. “The fun of killing,” she repeated, “I cannot understand at all. We are speaking different languages, Mynheer van Helmont. I hate the idea of killing anything. And do you know what I hate still more? It is what you call ‘a splendid shot.’ Gerard is a splendid shot, like his grandfather; the finest, they say, in the province. Yes, I can’t help it; I’ve often told him.” She plunged headlong. “I dare say you’re a splendid shot. But it’s just my hobby. To go creep, creeping through God’s creation, a gun in one’s hand, seeking some innocent life you may slay for the pleasure of slaying! Or, still worse, to sit in a chair and have the poor fluttering wretches driven in quantities on to one’s barrels! It’s the one thing that spoils the country for me, and only in the autumn I long to get away from Horstwyk. There’s no shooting in towns.”
“I was thinking of real sport,” he answered, with provoking meekness, “but I dare say you are right.”
“Oh, I know what real sport means!” she cried, and her eyes flashed. “Hallooing after some little palpitating victim with beagles or harriers or hounds! You may think me very stupid—I dare say you do—but I wouldn’t shake hands, if I could help it, with a man whom I knew to have voluntarily ‘hunted’ anything. As for women, I can’t believe they do it.” She broke off, in that nervous “unstrungness” which only comes to the gentler sex, hardly knowing, after her sudden burst of eloquence, whether to laugh or to cry.
“You are quite right, quite right,” he said again; but in his grave regard she only read approval of her callow softness. They had reached a little well-known wicket, and he stopped. The path went twisting away at this spot from the yellow fields into the deep recesses of the park.
“I think we separate here?” he said, and to her amazement she caught a touch of regret in his tone.
“Yes, as a rule. But papa has gone on—in honor of you, I suppose.”
“Then you cannot do better than follow.” He held open the gate for her to pass. “I think you must forgive me,” he said, with downcast eyes. “It was only once. In Ireland. And we didn’t kill the fox.”
“Because you couldn’t,” she answered, fiercely. “Or do people keep foxes, like stags, to uncart?”