bold; when she is thirty she will be fat and perhaps dispensing cheap
wine in a low cabaret. And you called me Rosalind between times and
signed your verses and letters Orlando! You quoted from Petrarch and
said I was your Laura. My faith! man is a curious animal. I have
been told that I am beautiful; and from me you turned to a Catharine!
I suspect she is lodged somewhere here in Quebec."

"A Catharine!" he repeated, wildly. The devil gathered up the reins.
"This is a mad, fantastic world! You kiss my handsome grey eyes a
thousand times, then? What rapture! Catharine? What a pretext! It
has no saving grace. You are mad, I am mad; the world is one of those
Italian panoramas! A thousand kisses, Diane . . . No; you have ceased
to be the huntress. You are Daphne. Well, I will play Apollo to your
Daphne. Let us see if you will change into laurel!" Lightly he leaped
the table, and she was locked in his arms. "What! daughter of Perseus
and Terra, you are still in human shape? Ah! then the gods themselves
are lies!"

She said nothing, but there was fear and rage in her eyes; and her
heart beat furiously against his.

Presently he pressed her from him with a pressure gentle but steady.
"Have no fear, Diane, or Daphne, or whatever you may be pleased to call
yourself. I am a gentleman. I will not take by force what you would
not willingly give. I have never played with a woman's heart nor with
a man's honor. And as for Catharine, I laugh. It is true that I
kissed her cheeks. I had been drinking, and the wine was still in my
head. I had left you. My heart was light and happy. I would have
kissed a spaniel, had a spaniel crossed my path instead of a Catharine.
There was no more taint to those kisses I gave to her than to those you