Leonard Merrick

“ Miss Netterville lit a cigarette, and gazed thoughtfully across a mulberry-tree. Characteristically, she had made no change in her costume on the day of her lover's arrival—and she had stated a fact when she declared herself indifferent to her appearance as a rule; but in spite of the ill-fitting blouse, the unbecomingly dressed blonde hair, in spite even of the coldly intellectual eyes, she looked a desirable woman. A psychologist might have thought she looked also a woman with potentialities. But Aloysius was not a psychologist ”

“ To be quite candid, love in its physical aspects is unpleasant to me, quite apart from the fact that marriage would be an abominable hindrance to my studies. I have no gift for domesticity; the prospect of district-visiting appals me, and tea-parties bore me to death. And I have no leaning towards maternity. I oughtn't to have promised to marry at all—I have more important things to do in my life. There are shoals of women capable of adding to the world's population, but the women capable of adding to its store of knowledge are comparatively few. ”

“ Why should I wait to drug you with a cigarette when I could tap you on the head with one of these?" He touched the pistols in the sash wound round his sturdy waist. "You see I am smoking them myself—take your choice among the lot!"
Miss Netterville and the brigand smoked in silence for a few moments. Then——
"Every man is a fool once," he repeated meditatively, "but there must be a limit to his folly. If I set you free like this, what sort of ass would you think me? No better than the wooer who let you change your mind!" ”

“ Thergrimabes consists of its dilapidated inn and a sprinkling of hovels. Half-naked children swarm in the dust, and beg of any misguided tourist who happens to stray there from the towns beyond; goatherds, dignified in their rags, roll cigarettes pensively, and prematurely old women occasionally appear at the doors and shade their eyes in the sun. ”

“ Aloysius has obtained an excellent living, and the eldest of their children is a little son, who engrosses his mother's attention to the exclusion of archæology. If it were not for her son's favourite game, the vicar's wife might think less often of her strange experience; but the boy tilts his straw hat like a sombrero, and sticks a pop-gun in his sash, and pretends that the summer-house is the "brigands' cave." At such times, Aloysius remarks humorously that "a little brigand is inappropriate to a vicarage garden." ”

“ People have begun to talk."
"In Bedfordshire?" she inquired again.
"Yes, in Bedfordshire—and they would talk in Bloomsbury, or Belgravia, or anywhere else. It's not proper, Gertrude, it is thought very improper indeed. You must remember that you are young and pretty, and——"
"Oh, don't!" she said wearily. "What an odious word! I'm not accustomed to consider my personal appearance, but I do trust that I'm not pretty.’"
"My sister often says that you would be extremely pretty," returned Aloysius, "if you didn't strain your hair back, and paid more attention to your clothes. ”

“ But then I never pretended to the kind of temperament that you admire. To me, my paramount duty must always be my work; to you, my paramount duty is to do the sort of thing that any other woman could do equally well. ”

“ Miss Netterville heard herself reply.
Before she left him he assured her that her escort might be trusted; and no mishap befell her on the road. But she had lost her nerve; a few days later she returned to England, and—perhaps she no longer considered protection so superfluous—she married Aloysius the following month, though he did not deem it necessary to inform him of her adventure.
They have been married for some years now, and get on together as well as most people. ”

“ Really, your notions are the most antique things in Greece!"
"I say that it would be preposterous for a young girl to roam about the world alone, in any case—you might be robbed and murdered here—and considering that you're engaged to me, it's more preposterous still. ”