“No, Sid, don’t belittle your old feelings. That doesn’t help. Rather the reverse,” and then once more she repeated the lines musingly as if to herself. Then she turned to Sid with a sudden decision of manner, as if her mind was made up.
“Sid, that was a very deep feeling. How do you know that it is not still alive?”
Sid made the usual despairing protestations. Rosamund regarded them but little.
“I wonder,” she continued, “if you really know your own mind. I wonder. You think you love me now, but then you thought you loved her then—till Judgment Day. Sid! Now see, I’m going to tell you my idea....”
Sid looked at her expectantly, waiting with anxious eyes. Then, with something of a return to her gayer manner, she went on:
“You remember what we were saying just now about your cage. Well, I’m going to let you out for a month or two.”
She waved aside a remonstrant ejaculation from Sid.
“Yes! and you are to spend the last breath of freedom in finding out if there is still any truth left in these old impassioned statements. That is, you will go to Myrtilla, and see if you still want to drink of that ‘little starlit spring,’ and you will go to Meriel and see, well ... about Judgment Day! And, while you are on pilgrimage, there are one or two other ‘muses’ it might be well to make quite sure about.”
Sid interrupted with impatient incredulity, not believing her serious. But the more he expostulated, the firmer she became.
“I declare, the idea grows on me!” she said. “I wonder it never occurred to me before. Now that it has, I must insist on your carrying it out—for my sake. When I think of your nature, in the light of all this printed experience, I should not really feel safe otherwise. Of course, your cage is strong, I know. So long as I care to keep the key, your escape is impossible. But then, I should not like to find some day in the future, that, secure as you were, you were in secret pining to be off after some little starlit spring on the other side of the bars. So, Sid, I’m sorry, but you must pack up right away, and go on pilgrimage.”