Page:Earl Derr Biggers - Seven Keys to Baldpate (1913).djvu/223

Rh in words of one syllable, as the butcher's boy might have told his love to the second kitchen maid.

"I love you," he continued. Idiot!

Often Mr. Magee had thought of the moment when he would tell his love to a woman. It was a moment of dim lights, music perhaps in the distance, two souls caught up in the magic of the moonlit night—a pretty graceful speech from him, a sweet gracious surrender from the girl. And this—instead.

"I love you." In heaven's name, was he never going to stop saying it? "I want you to believe."

Bright morning on the mountain, a girl in an angry mood at his side, a seedy chaperon on his trail, an erring cook ahead. Good lord! He recalled that a fellow novelist, whose love scenes were regarded as models by young people suffering the tender passion, had once confessed that he proposed to his wife on a street-car, and was accepted just as the conductor handed him his transfers. Mr. Magee had been scornful. He could never be scornful again. By a tremendous effort he avoided repeating his childish refrain.