"Child or no child, this is a book that no modest woman ought to read."
"But that all modest men may, with pleasure and profit for themselves," rejoins she, ironically. "Well, when I have finished it I shall be better able to tell you whether I agree with you or not."
"Do you mean to say that, after what I have told you, you are still bent on reading it?" he asks, astonishment and displeasure fighting together for the mastery in his voice.
"Certainly!" (looking rather frightened, but speaking with a sort of timid bravado). "Do you suppose that Eve would have cared to taste the apple if it had been specially recommended to her notice as a particularly good, juicy Ribstone pippin? Give it me, please!"
"Take it!" he says, throwing it with hasty impoliteness into her lap. "Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest every word of it; and since you have a taste for such literature, I can lend you a dozen more like it."
So speaking, he rises abruptly, and leaves her side and the room at almost the same moment.
When he is gone, finding that the rest of the company have likewise slipped away in different directions, Esther relieves her feelings by flinging the disputed volume on the floor; sits for a quarter of an hour staring uncertainly at it; then, pocketing her pride, picks it up, sneaks off with it to the library, and, climbing the high, steep ladder, deposits it in the hole whence she had ravished it, between two of its fellows, as agreeably lax and delicately indelicate as itself. Half an hour later, passing through the hall, she sees the door of Gerard's sanctum ajar, and hears some one walking to and fro within. To one so praise-loving, the temptation to trumpet forth her own excellence is irresistible. She knocks timidly.
"Come in!"
"I don't want to come in," she answers, standing in beautiful, bashful awkwardness in the aperture.
"Is there anything that I can do for you?" he asks, advancing towards her, looking slightly surprised.