"Mr Sanford--you are intolerable!"

"Indeed, I am disposed to act on your courteous suggestion, and go home, and take your skates with me.

"If you do, I will never speak to you again."

"Don't pledge yourself too deeply. You spoke of having put childish things behind you. I did not suspect you of having been such a mistress of irony."

"Will you give me my skates?"

"Certainly. I will put them on for you. Where do you think the ice is--strongest?"

We were walking along the bank, I with my nose in the air, he white with rage. It wasn't easy to make him lose his temper, but when you did succeed, he was wicked.

"This will do. I won't trouble you for your a.s.sistance. I prefer to put on my own skates, thank you."

He dug his heel right through the ice.

"Do you call this strong?"

"I wish you would not do that. You forget that I am not quite so heavy as you." We went on a little further. Then I stood on the edge. "You perceive that it will bear me. Now--for about the dozenth time--will you give me my skates?"

"I will put them on for you."

"I have already told you that I will do that for myself."

"Don't be absurd. Sit down on the bank." He spoke to me as if I were a slave. As it was evidently useless to remonstrate, I obeyed, placing myself on the sloping bank. "There is a condition I must make. If I put your skates on first you must promise not to start till I am ready."

"I shall promise nothing of the kind."

"Then in that case I am afraid I shall have to keep you waiting till I am equipped."

He actually did too. And as d.i.c.k's skates were in rather a muddle, or he did not understand them, or something, it took him a tremendous time to get them properly attached to his boots, while I sat on the bank and froze. But I tried to keep myself as warm as I could by an occasional genial remark.

"You understand, Mr Sanford, that when we do get home I will never speak to you again. I never want to see you again either."

"The betting is that we never shall get home again, since it is probable that we shall both of us be drowned in the lake. That is, if there is a sufficient depth of water to drown us."

"Sufficient depth! Why, I'm told that in places there are twenty feet.

I imagine that that is enough to drown even you, big though you seem to think yourself. Though I totally fail to see why we should both of us be drowned. Why can't I drown by myself?"

"If you drown I drown."

"That is really too ridiculous. Pray, who is talking like a child now?

I quite fail to see how it can matter to you what becomes of me."

"You do know."

"I do not know. I have not the faintest shadow of a notion."

"Don't you know?"

He twisted himself round and glared at me in such a fashion that I was alarmed.

"Mr Sanford, don't look at me like that!"

"Then kindly remember that there are limits even to my patience."

"I should think that your patience was like the jam in the tart; the first bite you don't get to it, and the second you go clean over it."

"I am glad to be able to afford you so favourable an opportunity for the exercise of your extremely pretty wit. Please give me your foot."

He took it without waiting for any giving. Then immediately proceeded to comment on it, as if it had not belonged to me, or as if I had not been there.

"A dainty foot it is; and reasonably shod in decently fitting boots; not six and a quarter."

"You still seem not to understand that my size in gloves is six and a quarter."

"I'm so dull."

"You are. And something else besides."

He simply ignored my hint. I hate people not to notice when I intend to sting them. It makes you feel so helpless. He went on calmly discussing my foot.

"It's worth while allowing you to flesh the arrows of your malice in one's hide for the privilege of holding this between one's fingers."

"Do you think so?"

"I do."

It was strange how excessively odd an effect his touch had on me. It made me thrill from top to toe. I could scarcely speak. When I stood, to my amazement I found that I was trembling.

"Are your skates comfortable?"

"They seem all right."

"Molly, let us understand each other. Are you bent on skating?"

"I am. Though there is not the slightest reason why you should."

"The ice may be sufficiently thick in places, but it certainly is not all over, and, as you don't know where the weak points are, it will be at the risk of your life if you venture on it."

"It is strong enough to bear me, though it is very possible that it may not be strong enough to bear you also. So, if you do not desire to add to the risk on which you are so insistent, you will not force on me your company."

"If you go I go also."

"Then don't talk so much--and come!"

He had been holding my hand. I s.n.a.t.c.hed it from him and was on the ice. In an instant he was at my side. I was filled with a curious excitement. Something had got into my blood, microbes perhaps, of a fever-generating kind. The various pa.s.sages of arms which we had had together seemed, all at once, to have reached their climax. I was seized with a sudden frenzy of resolve to show him, once for all, that what it was my pleasure to do that I would do. I craved for motion; yearned for movement--if only as a means of relief for my pent-up feelings. Longed for a flight through the air, to rush through it, to race. Especially to race that man--or to escape from him. I did not care much which.