Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/32

"The next time you do it," said Mr. Herwin, "I shall go, too. In fact," he said, "every time you do it, I shall come out and bring you in."

"Very well," I said; "that would only make it the more interesting."

The secretary looked at me with a kind of proud motion of his head, for he saw that I taunted him. I was sorry by then, and I would have stopped him, but it was too late. Before the library window, in the face of the porch light, in the sight of my father, he told me how he felt to me.

"Oh, what a pity!" I said—

If he had talked that way, if he had looked that way, if I had known he felt that way, out on Ararat, in the dark and wet, I should have said something so insolent to him as no man ever could forgive a woman for, not if she were sorry till she died for having said it. But it was not storming any more. And it seemed different in the light and quiet, and with Father so near. So I answered as I did. What could a girl do more? I 'm sure I was quite civil to the secretary. I can't see any particular reason why he should get up such an expression as he did. And he dropped Job, too, and Job growled at him—there 's positively no limit to that dog's intelligence.