“You are the greatest goose that ever lived. I never kissed Jack Meriden. I love you—not as a man loves, but as a woman loves.”
“I love you the same way,” answered Sid, the storm-clouds suddenly swept from his face, “there is only one way of—loving. The other thing needs another name.”
And, with that, Rosamund snapped to the door of his cage forever.
EVA, THE WOODLAND AND I
WHENEVER I ought to be working especially hard at my desk in the middle of the woodland, where I have built myself a little log house for my books, and my pictures and my pen—because the household down at the bottom of the hill does not want a man indoors writing all day when there are all kinds of important domestic operations afoot, which, when he is there, have to be done softly, with hushed voices and muffled tread, lest the serenity of the great brain with the pen be ruffled—whenever, I say, I ought to be working especially hard up there in the wood, among the pines and the bracken and the dancing leaves and the whistle of birds that seem to call, “What a sin it is to be working on such a day!” there often comes a tiny figure and looks in at the window with three-year-old baby eyes, and watches the mysterious person there at the desk, with, for all her affected innocent look, a definite purpose of seduction in her baby heart. I know too well what she is up to. It is a day all aromatic sunshine, and she wants us to play truant together, hunting butterflies and wild flowers, instead of having to behave properly with nurse, and sitting there at that stupid desk.
She knows perfectly well that she is doing the sweet forbidden thing, for her mother has impressed upon her again and again, with much solemnity, that she must on no account interrupt father when he is busy—on masterpieces. Eva has always listened with an air of enigmatic innocence on her little broad indomitable face. Her blue eyes have worn a look of what I might call stubborn obedience, and then—Well, I am sorry to say that on the first opportunity, when nurse’s back is turned, she has made off as fast as her sturdy little legs will carry her, up among the secrecies of the fern, till at last she has arrived at my window—a baby Eve, offering me the wild apple of idleness and sunshine.