Page:Greatest Short Stories (1915).djvu/242

Rh causes: Dyspepsia, religious conflicts, love. Now is your digestion awry?”

“No, sir, good as usual. I’m not melancholy on religion and—”

“You don’t tell me you’re in love?”

“Well—yes—I suppose that’s about it, Uncle Teddy.”

I took a long breath to recover from my astonishment at this unimaginable revelation, then said:

“Is your feeling returned?”

“I really don’t know, uncle. I don’t believe it is. I don’t see how it can be. I never did anything to make her love me. What is there in me to love! I’ve borne enough for her— that is, nothing that could do her any good—though I’ve endured on her account, I may say, anguish. So, look at it any way you please, I neither am, do, nor suffer anything that can get a woman’s love.”

“Oh, you man of learning! Even in love you tote your grammar along with you, and arrange a divine passion under the active, passive, and neuter!”

Daniel smiled faintly.

“You’ve no idea. Uncle Teddy, that you are twitting on facts; but you hit the truth there; indeed you do. If she were a Greek or Latin woman I could talk Anacreon or Horace to her. If women only understood the philosophy of the flowers as well as they do the poetry—” 239