Page:The Happy Hypocrite - Beerbohm - 1897.pdf/41

 forgive him for robbing the nests. “Every day,” she said, “I have come to the wood, because I was lonely, and it seemed to pity me. But now I have you. And it is glad.”

She clung closer to his arm, and he kissed her. She pushed back her straw bonnet, so that it dangled from her neck by its ribands, and laid her little head against his shoulder. For a while he forgot his treachery to her, thinking only of his love and her love. Suddenly she said to him, “Will you try not to be angry with me, if I tell you something? It is something that will seem dreadful to you.”

“Pauvrette,” he answered, “you cannot have anything very dreadful to tell.”

“I am very poor,” she said, “and every night I dance in a theatre. It is the only thing I can do to earn my bread. Do you despise me because I dance?” She looked up shyly at him and saw that his face was full of love for her and not angry.

“Do you like dancing?” he asked.

“I hate it,” she answered, quickly. “I hate it indeed. Yet—to-night, alas! I must dance again in the theatre.”