He did not interrupt her. Even when she had done he was silent, absorbed in watching an insect wriggling in circles on the surface of the water. "Have you no answer," she asked, "after all the disgraceful things I have accused you of?" "What should I answer, most learned judge?" he retorted. "My one claim to distinction is that I am absolutely devoid of moral sense. Do you want me to lose it?" "If you are so weak and have no reliance on yourself," she exclaimed in growing zeal, "let me be your mainstay and support. Lean on me, your friend, adviser, your----" "Foster-father," he suggested, and stirred the slime in the ditch with his whip. She awakened to the fact that what she had said had not made the least impression; he was laughing at her all the time. "Get up and let me pass," she said. "Why should I try to do my best for someone who is not worth it?" He made no sign of moving from his place. "Now, look here, comrade," he said, pointing down at the black mirror of ditch-water. "There goes a water-spider with its legs in the air and its head downwards. If you were to ask it why it swims like that, it would say because it knows no other way. That's its nature. Well, do you see, it's my nature. What's to be done? You can't alter it." "Anyone can restrain his evil passions," she exclaimed, flaring up in indignation. "Anyone can, if he likes, keep his eyes fixed on a high ideal and struggle to attain it--can listen to a friend when she would help, and say to him----" "Well, what would the friend say?" he asked ingratiatingly, swinging himself nearer. She did not answer. She had put her hands before her face and was crying--crying till her sobs convulsed her body. "For God's sake, sit still!" he exclaimed, circling his arms towards her, for on the wobbling trunk of the mountain ash she might at any moment lose her balance. "Child, dear little comrade, sit still." She quivered all over. She heard nothing but the sweet, caressing, criminal "dear little comrade," which her soul had been yearning to hear. And then he promised her to turn over a new leaf. He would not flirt any more. He would give up tippling with the bailiffs; he would read stiff agricultural literature; he would do anything--oh, what wouldn't he do?--if she would only stop crying. "Give me your word of honour?" she asked, raising her wet, reddened eyes to his. He gave it without hesitation. Comforted and grateful, she smiled at him. "You'll never repent it," she said. "I'll stand by you. I'll be a true friend, and do all I can for you." "All that the two watch-dogs permit," he added. To-day she didn't mind his saying "two watch-dogs." She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Yes, of course, what _they_ permit." Then they both laughed so heartily that they narrowly escaped falling into the ditch, after all. CHAPTER XX