She told him that she did.
"Who writes all those awful things?"
She did not answer, and he exclaimed, triumphantly, "Men,—men write 'em, men do 'em, and worse things,—things so hair-lifting that they dassent publish 'em. If I could reveal to you the secrets of this here breast," and he struck himself a smart blow on the chest, and looked fearfully over his shoulder, "you could keep me from ever raising a monument to myself, for they'd have me shut up in a place where they'd never let me out to choose one."
"Micah," she said, with a shriek, "get out! I'm afraid of you," and she retreated precipitately from him toward the table, where she dropped into a chair.
A sudden change came over her companion. He struck an attitude of exaggerated admiration, and exclaimed, "Hippolyta, you might go on the stage,—I never saw such acting."
In fascinated confusion she stared speechlessly at him.
"You're an astonishing woman," he cried, skipping to the hearth-rug, and extending both hands toward her. "I never saw such nerve, such coolness."
She looked in her lap for her knitting, and seeing it was not there picked rashly at her apron.
"For," he went on, with a final flourish, "bad as I am, black as are my vices, they are a pale cream-colour beside yours, for there is one crime I have not dared to commit, and it lies light as a feather on your soul.
"Why don't you ask what crime it is?" he inquired, after a short period of silence.