from, and for a moment was tempted to get his rook
rifle—but what was the good of a dead rabbit—besides,
they looked so happy! He put the glasses down
and went towards his greenhouse to get a drawing block,
thinking to sit on the wall and make a sort of Midsummer
Night’s Dream sketch of flowers and rabbits.
Someone was there, bending down and doing something
to his creatures. Who had the cheek? Why,
it was Sylvia—in her dressing-gown!
He grew hot, then cold, with anger. He could
not bear anyone in that holy place! It was hateful
to have his things even looked at; and she—she
seemed to be fingering them. He pulled the door
open with a jerk, and said: “What are you
doing?” He was indeed so stirred by righteous
wrath that he hardly noticed the gasp she gave, and
the collapse of her figure against the wall.
She ran past him, and vanished without a word.
He went up to his creatures and saw that she had
placed on the head of each one of them a little sprig
of jessamine flower. Why! It was idiotic!
He could see nothing at first but the ludicrousness
of flowers on the heads of his beasts! Then
the desperation of this attempt to imagine something
graceful, something that would give him pleasure touched
him; for he saw now that this was a birthday decoration.
From that it was only a second before he was horrified
with himself. Poor little Sylvia! What
a brute he was! She had plucked all that jessamine,
hung out of her window and risked falling to get hold
of it; and she had woken up early and come down in
her dressing-gown just to do something that she thought
he would like! Horrible—what he had
done! Now, when it was too late, he saw, only
too clearly, her startled white face and quivering
lips, and the way she had shrunk against the wall.
How pretty she had looked in her dressing-gown with
her hair all about her, frightened like that!
He would do anything now to make up to her for having
been such a perfect beast! The feeling, always
a little with him, that he must look after her—dating,
no doubt, from days when he had protected her from
the bulls that were not there; and the feeling of
her being so sweet and decent to him always; and some
other feeling too—all these suddenly reached
poignant climax. He simply must make it up to
her! He ran back into the house and stole upstairs.
Outside her room he listened with all his might,
but could hear nothing; then tapped softly with one
nail, and, putting his mouth to the keyhole, whispered:
“Sylvia!” Again and again he whispered
her name. He even tried the handle, meaning to
open the door an inch, but it was bolted. Once
he thought he heard a noise like sobbing, and this
made him still more wretched. At last he gave
it up; she would not come, would not be consoled.
He deserved it, he knew, but it was very hard.
And dreadfully dispirited he went up to his room,
took a bit of paper, and tried to write:
“Dearest Sylvia,