Hadria laughed. “You do make a lovely allegory!” she exclaimed. “This sense of guilt, this disposition to go back—this attitude of apology—it is speaking, inimitable!”
“But meanwhile that wretched child is shrieking itself into a fit!” cried the allegory, with the air of a repentant criminal.
“Whenever you open your mouth, out falls a symbol,” exclaimed Hadria. “Be calm; Hannah will soon comfort her, and it is truer kindness not to remind her again of her grievance, poor little soul. But we will go back if you like (you are indeed a true woman!), and you can say you are sorry you made so free with your own possessions, and you wish you had done your duty better, and are eager to return and let Her Majesty hold you captive. Your prototype always does, you know, and she is nearly always pardoned, on condition that she never does anything of that kind again.”
Professor Theobald seemed too much concerned about the child, who was still wailing, to pay much attention to any other topic. He turned to retrace his steps.
“I think you make a mistake,” said Hadria. “As soon as she sees you she will want the watch, and then you will be placed between the awful alternatives of voluntarily surrendering your freedom, and heartlessly refusing to present yourself to her as a big plaything. In one respect you have not yet achieved a thorough fidelity to your model; you don’t seem to enjoy sacrifice for its own sake. That will come with practice.”
“I wish that child would leave off crying.”
Hadria stopped in the road to laugh at the perturbed Professor.
“She will presently. That is only a cry of anger, not of distress. I would not leave her, if it were. Yes; your vocation is clearly allegorical. Feminine to your finger-tips, in this truly feminine predicament. We are all—nous autres femmes—like the hero of the White Ship, who is described by some delightful boy in an examination paper as being ‘melted by the shrieks of a near relation.’”
The Professor stumbled over a stone in the road, and looked back at it vindictively.
“The near relation does so want to hold one’s watch and to stuff it into his mouth, and he shrieks so movingly if one brutally removes one’s property and person!”