Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/191

179 to come with me, and she wouldn't. You see the sort of man you have to deal with.'

I waited.

At last:

'Yes,' she said in a low voice, 'I'll go with you.' 'You'll have a hard life of it with me—even supposing the life itself wasn't hard. You see the sort of man I am. I am a little mad. I care for nobody but myself. Then I'm a terrible liar: you can believe nothing I say. I have told you bushels of lies to-night.'

She rose, and looked me in the face.

'I don't be-lieve you!' she said. 'You're not selfish! you're not a liar!'

'But I'm quite mad.' 'How can you talk like that?' she cried out, 'You know I'd go with you wherever you liked in the whole world! You know I would!'

'Very well,' I said, 'very well.' I sat down on the bed almost exhausted.

As I sat with my head bowed, looking at the carpet and not caring to struggle any more, she knelt down in front of me, looking into my face, and then put her arms up and round me. I opened my knees: she put herself between them. I closed my eyes. My head nodded, and nodded, and nodded.

'Ha!' said I, waking with a start, 'what's the time? I mustn't forget to wind up my watch.' I took it out. A quarter-past three. Time had gone quickly.

'Let me see,' I said, 'What time's the morning mail to Paris?… Can we get a cab here easily?' 'Yes,' she said, 'there's a mews at the end of the street.'

'It'll be all right if we start by six, I'm sure.' I was thinking what time it was when Brooke and I left Dunraven Place for the French mail.

The end of it was that I lay down on the bed to rest myself for a few minutes, while she did something or other (I did not notice what she said), and then I fell asleep. Then I was half-wakened by feeling some one bending over me, to kiss me on the lips: to which I objected, and moved my head, but the other lips came after mine, and almost caught them, despite a