Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/363

Rh don't know the way. Hysterics is a luxury papa would never have permitted."

"Do you nag?"

"I despise a nagging woman!" I say, sitting suddenly upright, "it's so intensely mean! No, Paul, I shall get into a boiling rage, and then I shall have done with it."

"Well spoken" he says heartily. "Get into as many passions as you like, my pet, but never nag, and don't sulk; more love is worn out that way than by any other. Now for another question. Will you ever flirt? I could stand a good deal from you, Nell, but I would never stand that."

"Are you afraid?" I ask proudly. "Is your opinion of me so bad as that?"

"There is only one man I should ever be afraid of your taking too much notice of," he says. "You know who that is; some day perhaps you will compare me unfavourably with him, and"

"Have you not lost that old madness? Paul, Paul! is there not a wide difference between pity and love?"

"There is, but I hate to think that any man ever uttered a word of love to you save me, and—confess now," he goes on, half jestingly, half earnestly, "that you don't think me half as good as he is?"

"You will not get me to say that you are, for you are not," I say, shaking my head. "You are too masterful and determined; you will have your own way, and you are more than a little bit selfish, and"

"A jealous fool!" he says, finishing my sentence in a different way to what I had intended. "Well, you have taught me one vice I never knew before, and that's jealousy."

"Is it a vice? I think the very pith and marrow of love must be gone when lovers grow careless about each other's likes and dislikes. Paul," I ask, suddenly, "do you think that by