"And now," said she at last, "if you're quite ready, I'll blow out the
candle."
"Whenever you will," I answered, stretching myself upon my hay-pile.
Almost as I spoke the light vanished, and in the pitchy gloom my
hearing seemed to grow the more acute; I heard her light, assured
tread, the fall of her shoes as she kicked them off, the rustle of the
hay that was her bed, a long-drawn, sleepy sigh. These sounds at last
subsiding, I spoke:
"Have I angered you, Diana?" Here I paused for answer but getting none
continued, "Though indeed my strictures were all well-meant, for I
cannot bear that you should do anything unworthy--" Here, though she
uttered no word, I distinguished a sudden, petulant rustle of hay as
if she had kicked viciously. "And so, Diana," I continued, "I want you
to promise that henceforth you will so govern your conduct, so order
your life that you may become a woman, gentle and sweet and good, in
whose presence no evil thing may exist, one who is herself an
inspiration to good and noble things, a woman whose friendship is a
privilege and whose--whose love would be a crowning glory. Do you
understand, Diana?"
"Hold your tongue!" she cried very suddenly. "Hold y'r tongue an' go
to sleep--do!"
In the fervour of my exordium I had assumed a sitting posture but at
her coarse rejoinder I fell back, inexpressibly shocked, and lay
staring upon the dark, tingling with mortification that I should have
wasted myself in such vain appeal and been thus callously repulsed by
one who was no more than an ignorant gipsy-wench, prone to coarse
expressions and small larcenies, a creature knowing little difference
between good and evil and caring less.
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