“But this is unseemly. You forget that I am a boy.”
“Yes, for some reason or other, it is easy to forget that. But I was merely supposing. Say that a man had come along when you were dressed as a girl—why, what then?”
“What then indeed,” said she, with some spirit, “would you have talked like this to me, of—of love?”
“No, I wouldn’t,” said Rust, stoutly enough. “It would then have been quite another matter. As it is, you play the deuce with my brain and fancy. I start in to talk to you as man to man, and then I think you are almost better fitted to be a girl—and you admit you were raised somewhat in that manner, so what can one expect?”
“Well, what if your sweetheart heard you speaking thus?” said Garde, who was enjoying the situation the more for the very danger of it. “Should you like to have her hear you telling me I should have made a girl that a man could—could love?”
“You being a boy, why not?” Adam made answer. “Ah, she is too present in my thought and feeling for me to say anything I would be loth for her to hear.”
They had arrived at the edge of a brook which was somewhat swelled by the snow, back on the hills, melting in the genial warmth of the sun. It was nothing for Adam to stride across, stepping from rock to rock, but Garde hesitated, her femininity uppermost in a moment, despite her utmost efforts to be boyish.
“Here, give us your hand,” said big Adam, turning back to help her over. “Now, then, jump!”
Thrilling with the delight of his warm, strong fingers closing so firmly on her own, Garde came across the brook in safety and then reluctantly released her grip from his.
Adam had not escaped unscathed from this contact of love, with which she was fairly thrilling. He looked at her oddly, when they were safe again on the further side. Garde caught her breath, in fear that she had betrayed herself at last, in that moment of weakness.