IT is a surprising and trying moment for a girl who throws water upon a
young man's face to see that face begin to dissolve and come off, feature
by feature, in polychromatic splendour.
She did not faint; her intellect reeled for a moment; then she dropped
her hands from her eyes and saw him sitting up on the ground, blinking at
her gravely from a streaked and gaudy countenance. His wig was tilted
over one eye; rouge and pearl powder made his cheeks and chin very gay;
and his handsome, silky moustache hung by one corner from his upper lip.
It was too much. She sat down limply on a mossy log and wept.
His senses returned gradually; after a while he got up and walked down to
the edge of the brook with all the dignity that unsteady legs permitted.
Fascinated, she watched him at his ablutions where he squatted by the
water's edge, scrubbing away as industriously as a washer-racoon. It did
not occur to her to flee; curiosity dominated--an overpowering desire to
see what he really resembled in _puris naturalibus_.
After a while he stood up, hurled the damp wig into the woods, wiped his
hands on his knickerbockers and his face on his sleeve, and, bending
over, examined his collapsed calves.
And all the while, as the fumes of the chloroform disappeared and he
began to realise what had been done to him, he was becoming madder and
madder.
She recognised the wrath in his face as he swung on his heel and came
toward her.
"It is your own fault!" she said, resolutely, "for playing a silly trick
like----" But she observed his advance very dubiously, straightening up
to her full slender height to confront him, but not rising to her feet.
Her knees were still very shaky.
He halted close in front of her. Something in the interrogative yet
fearless beauty of her upward gaze checked the torrent of indignant
eloquence under which he was labouring, and, presently, left him even
mentally mute, his lips parted stupidly.
She said: "According to the old order of things a well-bred man would ask
my pardon. But a decently-bred man, in the first place, wouldn't have
done such a thing to me. So your apology would only be a paradox----"
"What!" he exclaimed, stung into protest. "Am I to understand that after
netting me and chloroforming me and nearly drowning me----"
"My mistake was perfectly natural. Do you suppose that I would even dream
of trailing _you_ as you really are?"
He gazed at her bewildered; passed his unsteady hand over his
countenance, then sat down abruptly beside her on the mossy log and
buried his head in his hands.
She looked at him haughtily, sitting up very straight; he continued
beside her in silence, face in his hands as though overwhelmed. Nothing
was said for several minutes--until the clear disdain of her gaze
changed, imperceptibly; and the rigidity of her spinal column relaxed.
"I am very sorry this has happened," she said. There was, however, no
sympathy in her tone. He made no movement to speak.
"I am sorry," she repeated after a moment. "It is hard to suffer
humiliation."
"Yes," he said, "it is."
"But you deserved it."
"How? I didn't fashion my face and figure."