g out] Oh, that's not true: it's NOT true, Jack. I never
wanted you to do those dull, disappointing, brutal, stupid, vulgar
things. I always hoped that it would be something really heroic at last.
[Recovering herself] Excuse me, Jack; but the things you did were never
a bit like the things I wanted you to do. They often gave me great
uneasiness; but I could not tell on you and get you into trouble. And
you were only a boy. I knew you would grow out of them. Perhaps I was
wrong.

TANNER. [sardonically] Do not give way to remorse, Ann. At least
nineteen twentieths of the exploits I confessed to you were pure lies. I
soon noticed that you didn't like the true stories.

ANN. Of course I knew that some of the things couldn't have happened.
But--

TANNER. You are going to remind me that some of the most disgraceful
ones did.

ANN. [fondly, to his great terror] I don't want to remind you of
anything. But I knew the people they happened to, and heard about them.

TANNER. Yes; but even the true stories were touched up for telling.
A sensitive boy's humiliations may be very good fun for ordinary
thickskinned grown-ups; but to the boy himself they are so acute,
so ignominious, that he cannot confess them--cannot but deny them
passionately. However, perhaps it was as well for me that I romanced a
bit; for, on the one occasion when I told you the truth, you threatened
to tell of me.

ANN. Oh, never. Never once.

TANNER. Yes, you did. Do you remember a dark-eyed girl named Rachel
Rosetree? [Ann's brows contract for an instant involuntarily]. I got up
a love affair with her; and we met one night in the garden and walked
about very uncomfortably with our arms round one another, and kissed at
parting, and were most conscientiously romantic. If that love affair had
gone on, it would have bored me to death; but it didn't go on; for the
next thing that happened was that Rachel cut me because she found out
that I had told you. How did she find it out? From you. You went to her
and held the guilty secret over her head, leading her a life of abject
terror and humiliation by threatening to tell on her.

ANN. And a very good thing for her, too. It was my duty to stop her
misconduct; and she is thankful to me for it now.

TANNER. Is she?

ANN. She ought to be, at all events.

TANNER. It was not your duty to stop my misconduct, I suppose.

ANN. I did stop it by stopping her.

TANNER. Are you sure of that? You stopped my telling y