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Updated: July 26, 2025
She was evidently sublimely happy at least in Merryon's society, but she did not pick up her strength very quickly, and but for her unfailing high spirits Merryon would have felt anxious about her. There seemed to be nothing of her. She was not like a creature of flesh and blood. Yet how utterly, how abundantly, she satisfied him!
That's what you are!" "All right," said Merryon. "Leave off crying!" He spoke with the same species of awkward kindliness that characterized his actions, and there must have been something strangely comforting in his speech, for the little dancer's tears ceased as abruptly as they had begun. She dashed a trembling hand across her eyes. "Who's crying?" she said.
"You can't," said Merryon. "I can," she said. He frowned still more. "Not if I say otherwise, Puck." She snapped her fingers at him and laughed. "I am in earnest," Merryon said. "I can't keep you here for the hot weather. It would probably kill you." "What of that?" she said. He ignored her frivolity. "It can't be done," he said. "So you must make the best of it."
There fell a terrible silence a pause, as it were, of suspended vitality, while the iron bit deeper and deeper into tissues too numbed to feel. Then, "Fetch me a drink!" said Merryon, curtly. "I must be getting back to duty." And with soundless promptitude the man withdrew, thankful to make his escape. "Well? Is she all right?"
She gave him the lightest caress imaginable, shook hands affectionately with young Harley, who was looking decidedly less pinched than he had upon arrival, and stood waving an energetic hand as they went away into the dripping dark. "You didn't tell her anything?" Merryon asked, as they plunged down the road. "Not more than I could help, Major. But she seemed to know without."
He wondered what he should do with her. Was she too old for a foundling hospital? "How old are you?" he asked, abruptly. She did not answer. He looked at her, frowning. "Don't!" she said. "It's ugly. I'm not quite forty. How old are you?" "What?" said Merryon. "Not quite forty," she said again, with extreme distinctness. "I'm small for my age, I know. But I shall never grow any more now.
He raised no objection till he one day returned unexpectedly to find her dancing a hornpipe for the benefit of a small, admiring crowd to whom she had been administering tea. She sprang like a child to meet him at his entrance, declaring the entertainment at an end; and the crowd soon melted away. Then, somewhat grimly, Merryon took his wife to task.
It was a distinct command, the most distinct he had ever given her. Her clinging hands slipped from his arm. She stood rigid, unprotesting, white as death. The knocking was renewed with fevered energy as Merryon turned quietly to obey the summons. He closed the door upon his wife and went down the passage.
"Why do you offer me that?" the dancer demanded, in a voice that was curiously vibrant, as though it strove to conceal some overwhelming emotion. "Why don't you give me a man's drink?" "Because I think this will suit you better," Merryon said; and he spoke with a gentleness that was oddly at variance with the frown that drew his brows.
His will-o'-the-wisp might beckon, but she would never allow herself to be caught. She never spoke of love in her letters, always ending demurely, "Yours sincerely, Puck." But now and then there was a small cross scratched impulsively underneath the name, and the letters that bore this token accompanied Merryon through his inferno whithersoever he went.
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