Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/153

141 our second evening walk together. There is no allusion to it in the Journal, and as I was during most of it in more or less of a half-dreamy, half-abstracted state, I cannot remember much of what we said. That walk was not what might be called a success. We went up to the top of Primrose Hill again, and I snuffed in the breeze and was somewhat revived; but (it had been raining heavily earlier in the day) that made me appreciate how stickily muddy it was going down, and I was forthwith driven into a state of utter saplessness and disgust. Rosy mocked at me as well as she could, but I took no heed. Finally she declared she wouldn't walk with me any more. (This was half-way down the St. John's Wood Road.) I acquiesced. We stood still, I looking in front of me at nothing in particular, not thinking of offering my hand. Then she turned and walked away. I did not look at her. When she had got some twenty yards, I looked at her with a comic smile: sighed: hit my iron-tipped stick-end straight on the pavement: said a little wearily, 'Oh dear,' and went with large strides after her.

I soon caught her up, and we walked on side by side in silence; till I observed:

'I'm sorry I was rude—if I was rude.'

'Then you were rude then!' said Rosy, tossing her head a little.

'Rudeness implies deliberation,' I said, 'now the best definition of sin is: the deliberately doing anything that may harm anyone else. Thus, it is sin to buy a pistol, intending to kill, and then absolutely killing a man: or, to ruin your body by excess, intending to beget, and then absolutely begetting, children.'

'You talk great stuff!' said Rosy.

'Dear child,' I answered, 'I intended you to apply my definition of sin to the point at issue, my rudeness or unrudeness. But this, like so many good intentions, has gone to the artificial protection of infernal causeways.'

Rosy vouchsafed no reply.

I proceeded:

'Well, be that as it may, considering the inability of the feminine intellect to comprehend anything of subtle