“Faith, one might travel far and not do better,” I told her. “When the gods send their best to a man he were a sorry knave to complain.”
Yet I stood helpless, in longing desire and yet afraid to dare. No nicety of conscience held me now, rather apprehension. I had not lived my one and twenty years without learning that a young woman may be free of speech and yet discreet of action, that alluring eyes are oft mismated with prim maiden conscience. ’Tis in the blood of some of them to throw down the gauntlet to a man’s courage and then to trample on him for daring to accept the challenge.
Her eyes derided me. A scoffing smile crept into that mocking face of hers. No longer I shilly-shallied. She had brought me to dance, and she must pay the piper.
“Modesty is a sweet virtue, but it doesn’t butter any bread,” I cried gaily. “Egad, I embrace my temptation.”
Which same I did, and the temptress too.
“Am I your temptation, Adam?” quoth the lady presently.
“I vow y’are the fairest enticement, Eve, that ever trod the earth since the days of the first Garden. For this heaven of your lips I’ll pay any price in reason. A year in purgatory were cheap——”
I stopped, my florid eloquence nipped in bud, for the lady had suddenly begun to disengage herself. Her glance shot straight over my shoulder to the entrance of the summer-house. Divining the presence of an intruder, I turned.
Aileen was standing in the doorway looking at us with an acrid, scornful smile that went to my heart like a knife.