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 you about my adventures; but how do you know that you stopped the adventures?
ANN.
Do you mean to say that you went on in the same way with other girls?
TANNER.
No.
I had enough of that sort of romantic tomfoolery with Rachel.