Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/73

Rh make no answer. I sat silent and eyed my gloves (which were rather soiled, by the bye, and not worth eyeing).

"Elsie," he said, "you criticise the conversation of that young couple opposite. But put yourself in her place. Would you prefer your husband to sit calmly by your side, and talk,—perhaps as you and I have talked so often,—quietly, undemonstratively, and sensibly. Would you be satisfied to marry a man who absolutely declined to be the conventional lover, writing ballads to your eyebrows, and extolling your virtues, real and imaginary, while the love fever lasted?"

His face was very pale, and his hands nervously clutched the side of my chair, as he leaned slightly towards me.

"Yes, I would be satisfied," I said

At that moment I felt acutely happy. Of course I knew to what he was coming. I always laugh when I read novels in which the heroines "look up with large surprised eyes," or "innocently wonder" what a proposing lover means. A girl always knows when a man is asking her