“I thought all boys liked fighting.”
“Not if there’s anything better to be done. A Punch and Judy show or a funeral will stop the most violent set-to. I’ve seen it times, when I was a boy in the street. Sam and I raised a cry one day of ‘soldiers’ 175 to stop a chum being knocked down. Then we ran.”
“Oh. Christopher, Christopher, can’t you forget it?”
He shook his head.
“I don’t want to. It wouldn’t be fair to Cæsar. Also I couldn’t.”
“Some day you will marry, and perhaps she will rather you should forget.”
“No, she won’t, she is far too fond of Cæsar.”
He stopped abruptly. For one brief moment the great voice of the streets and the yellow glare died away; he was blinded by a bewildering white light that broke down barriers undreamed of within his soul. Then the actual comparative darkness of the carriage obscured it and he found himself again conscious of the scent of roses, the sheen of satin and soft velvet, and his heart was beating madly. He had stumbled over the unsuspected threshold, surprised the hidden temple of his own heart, and this, inopportunely, prematurely, and, to his everlasting confusion, in the presence of another.
He clanged to the gates of his inner consciousness in breathless haste and set curb on his momentary shame and amazement. The break was so short his companion had barely time to identify the image disclosed when his voice went on with quiet deliberation.
“Or will be when she appears. A case of ‘if she be not fair to “he,” what care I how fair she be.’”