"Well, you know that Jap hated those enemies of mine because he loved
me."
Roger chuckled, and said I might sit on that stool and hint till
doomsday, but he was not going to tell me he loved me till he was good
and ready.
"When will that be?" I asked, and he said solemnly, with mock gravity:
"'I'm sure I don't know,'
Said the great bell of Bow."
"My father always said that there was no time like the present," I
replied.
He laughed, but said seriously:
"Nora, if you play with fire, you'll be burned. Burns leave scars.
Scars are ugly things, and I love only pretty things, like my precious
little girl."
"Aha!" I said triumphantly, "then you admit it at last."
He burst out laughing and said:
"Trapped! Help!"
After a while he wanted to hear my novel. So then I read it to him, my
beautiful story.
I read it well, as only an author can read his own work--not well in
the sense of elocution, but with every important point brought out.
It took me two and a half hours to read it, and when I was through,
twilight had settled. I had read the last words chiefly by the light
of the blazing fire. Roger got up, and walked up and down the room. I
watched him from my seat on the stool by the fire. Then he suddenly
came back to me, seized my manuscript, and made a motion as if he would
consign it to the flames. At that I screamed, like an outraged mother,
and caught at it, and he stood towering over me, watching me curiously.
"I wanted to try you then, Nora," he said. "Now I know that I have a
bigger rival in your work than any man. What am I to do?"