Her dress was tucked up to the knees; and beneath her red kerchief, knotted under her chin, those great sweet turquoise eyes of hers looked out, her white teeth gleamed between cherry lips, all her face glowed apple-red—and so fair, it seemed asking to be kissed. She boldly set her arms akimbo, and shot such irresistibly bright glances at him as thrilled him through and through. Looking round carefully, he drew nearer. “For a whole week I have been seeking you—in vain!” “Tell a dog lies: it may believe you.—Ha! the man goes grinning about the gardens every evening; every evening he flatters another girl: and now he’ll dare tell me ’tis not true?” “Why, Yagna, is this your greeting to me?” “Better fall on my knees and thank you for remembering I exist, eh?” “Last year I had another welcome!” “But this is not last year!” She turned away from him and hid her face. He at once stepped forward, clasping her with eager arms. She tore herself in anger from his grasp. “Let me alone; Teresa would tear my eyes out because of you!” “Yagna!” he sighed. “Get back; make love to her, the soldier’s wife; render her every service till he come back to her.—You were in prison, and she fed you well: now must you make her some return!” Each word of hers was like a blow, and uttered with such scorn that Matthew, taken aback, could find no answer. Shame took hold of him; he turned a dusky red, hung his head and took to flight at once. Though Yagna had but told him what she felt and had been feeling all the week, she now regretted her words. Never had she expected he would have been so offended as to leave her. “Foolish one! I spoke but out of spite!” she thought, gazing sorrowfully after him. “To be so angry all at once with me!—Matthew!” Rushing away through the orchard as if running for his life, he did not hear her call. “That wasp! that vixen!” he growled, making straight for home now, anger and astonishment alternately uppermost in his mind. Before, she had always been so sweet, so mild! And now she had treated him like dirt. He felt the shame so keenly that he looked round to make sure no one had heard. “And she reminded me of Teresa! Silly thing!—Teresa is naught to me—naught but a toy!—How her eyes blazed! In what a posture she set her arms!—Ah, it were no shame to be stung by such a one ... if only the honey were forthcoming afterwards.” He was now close to his hut, and slackened his pace. “She was angry that I alluded to the past.—But was I in the wrong?... As to Teresa”—here he made a wry face, as one who has gulped down vinegar—“I have enough of that cry-baby. I have taken no oath to remain with her, have I?... The tail sticks to the cow, but I am no cow’s tail!... And then she has a goodman of her own; and I might get a public rebuke from the pulpit on her account.... Such a woman is the ruin of a man.—To the devil with women!” he concluded, in a most cantankerous mood.