I looked at him in my turn. He had been bareheaded all day, for he had left his hat at the Hall, and he was now leaning back against a rock, his hands clasped behind his head, and the mischievous look I have so often noticed sparkling in his eyes. He really is rather a fine man, and he has certainly a good strong face. I replied, calmly enough to outward seeming:
"Because it has seemed to me an apt description."
"I hope not," he replied. "Cynicism is the small change of shallow minds. All the same, it is interesting to be criticised. I did not know when I offered to analyse your character that I was being subjected to the same test."
"Indeed you were not," I protested; "it was an appellation that came to me spontaneously whilst you were discoursing so luminously on woman a few months ago, and it is not to be taken seriously. It was wicked of Rose to tell you."
Rose laughed and put an arm around me. "Never mind, old girl," she said, "I'm going back to-morrow, so you must forgive me."
"I'm afraid you have not distinguished with sufficient care, Miss Holden, between satire and cynicism. I daresay there is a strain of satire in my composition, but I do not plead guilty to cynicism. A cynic is a surly, misanthropical man, with a disordered liver and a contempt for the good things of life."
"Oh, Grace!" murmured Rose in pathetic tones, "how could you!"
"Nonsense!" I said, "I am not going to allow you to pretend to take me seriously. Do you think I subjected the word to subtle analysis before I adopted it? I tell you it came to me as an inspiration, heaven-born, doubtless, but if you don't like it pray forget it; and for your comfort I will add that I have never attached to the word the meaning you read into it. I know you have no contempt for art and poetry and the good things of life. Now tell us what you see before you?"
I wished to change the subject, and referred simply to the view, as anyone might have known. Night was dropping her blue curtain as gently, as silently, as the nurse spreads the coverlet over the sleeping babe; but the stupid man professed to misunderstand me.
"I see before me," he replied, "two interesting specimens of the sex which ruins the peace and creates the paradise of the bulk of mankind. I would call them charming but for the fear that my candour might be mistaken for cajolery, which my soul abhorreth."