She was kneeling with the basket before her, and she began to straighten her shape, always, with her, a sign of a certain concentration of feeling. But she still retained her posture, and she looked like a fragment of a grand statue, broken short off at the hem of the robe.
‘Don’t you think you are a little uncertain in your sayings and doings, sometimes? If you are hungry, why won’t you eat?’
‘It is a hunger strike.’
‘What is that?’
‘An invention of the Siberian captives. When they are very sick of everything, they strike against their dinners, and die.’
‘You need not starve yourself to get anything in our gift,’ she said, and her glance intensified the grave beauty of her face.
It was too delicious; who could have helped going on?
‘Yes, I know; I have everything, and still I want one thing more.’
‘Oh, now I understand,’ she said, rising to her full height, and making a great litter of fruit and writing materials, as she overturned the basket. ‘Oh, I understand perfectly; I know exactly what you want to say. You need not go on with your half meanings, in that sly way. You said it once before, and you promised you would never say it again.’
Silly Victoria, she has spread all the cards on the table, and killed the game! One short half-hour’s lesson in a London boudoir, for that matter, in a London schoolroom, would have taught her how to play. This comes of being brought up to tell the truth like a Quaker, by an Ancient in a savage isle.