“I wonder,” she said thoughtfully.
“I should like to see you seize a drunken costermonger in the act of jumping on his wife by the scruff of the neck, and reduce him to such pulp that he sat up on his tail and begged.”
“Oh, Simon!” she exclaimed reproachfully. “I quite thought you were serious.”
“So I am, my dear,” I returned quickly, “as serious as I can be.”
She laughed. “Do you remember the first day you came to see me? You said that I could train any human bear to dance to whatever tune I pleased. I wonder if the same thought was at the back of your head.”
“It wasn't. It was a bad and villainous thought. I came under the impression that you were a dangerous seductress.”
“And I'm not?”
Oh, that spring day, that delicious tingle in the air, that laughing impertinence of the budding trees in the park through which we were then driving, that enveloping sense of fragrance and the nearness and the dearness of her! Oh, that overcharge of vitality! I leaned my head to hers so that my lips nearly touched her ear. My voice shook.
“You're a seductress and a witch and a sorcerer and an enchantress.”
The blood rose to her dark face. She half closed her eyes.