`Well, you need not think more of that: perhaps you did not mean to be rude to me by speaking out your mind: indeed, I believe you did not,' said the shrewd woman, in painfully innocent earnest. `And I thank you for giving help here. But - but mind you don't speak to me again in that way, or in any other, unless I speak to you.'
`O Miss Bathsheba! That is too hard!'
`No, it isn't. Why is it?'
`You will never speak to me; for I shall not be here long. I am soon going back again to the miserable monotony of drill - and perhaps our regiment will be ordered out soon. And yet you take away the one little ewe-lamb of pleasure that I have in this dull life of mine. Well, perhaps generosity is not a woman's most marked characteristic.'
`When are you going from here?' she asked with some interest. `In a month.'
`But how can it give you pleasure to speak to me?'
`Can you ask, Miss Everdene - knowing as you do - what my offence is based on?'
`If you do care so much for a silly trifle of that kind, then, I don't mind doing it,' she uncertainly and doubtingly answered. `But you can't really care for a word from me? you only say so - I think you only say so.'
`That's unjust - but I won't repeat the remark. I am too gratified to get such a mark of your friendship at any price to cavil at the tone. I do Miss Everdene, care for it. You may think a man foolish to want a mere word - just a good morning. Perhaps he is - I don't know. But you have never been a man looking upon a woman, and that woman yourself'
`Well.'
`Then you know nothing of what such an experience is like - and Heaven forbid that you ever should!'
`Nonsense, flatterer! What is it like? I am interested in knowing.'
`Put shortly, it is not being able to think, hear, or look in any direction except one without wretchedness, nor there without torture.'
`Ah, sergeant, it won't do - you are pretending!' she said, shaking her head. `Your words are too dashing to be true.'
`I am not, upon the honour of a soldier.'
`But why is it so? - Of course I ask for mere pastime.'
`Because you are so distracting - and I am so distracted.'
`You look like it.'
`I am indeed.'
`Why, you only saw me the other night!'
`That makes no difference. The lightning works instantaneously. I loved you then, at once - as I do now.'
Bathsheba surveyed him curiously, from the feet upward, as high as she liked to venture her glance, which was not quite so high as his eyes.