Come, tell me
about yourself--all about yourself, nothing about me."
"I cannot speak of anything else," he replied, after looking at her long
in silence. "My whole being is full of you: I cannot think of anything
else."
A smile of gratitude sweetly mastered her mouth: then it suddenly turned
to a smile of pity; then it died in a quiver of remorse.
"Oh, we cannot marry," she sighed. "We must not marry, if we could. Let me
tell you something dreadful. People hate each other after they are
married. I know: I have seen it. I knew a girl of seventeen who married a
man ten years older--a man who was Reason itself. Her friends told her,
and she herself believed it, that she was sure of happiness. But after
three years she found that she did not love, that she was not loved, and
that she was miserable. He was too rational: he used to judge her as he
would a column of figures--he had no comprehension for her feelings."
There was a momentary pause, during which she folded her hands and looked
at him, but with an air of not seeing him. In the recollection of this
heart-tragedy of the past and of another she had apparently forgotten the
one which was now pressing upon herself.
"It was incredible how cold and unsympathizing and dull he could be," she
went on. "Once, after she had worked a week in secret to surprise him with
a dressing-gown made by her own hands--labored a week, waited and hoped a
week for one word of praise--he only said, 'It is too short.
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