Page:Lippincotts Monthly Magazine-39.djvu/32

22 "It isn't what I think; it's what she thinks," he replied.

"Don't you know?"

"No."

"Then why don't you ask her?"

"I don't know that, either. I can't ask her. I try, but she prevents me."

"Why, John," exclaimed I, "you don't mean to tell me you're serious? Is it anything more than a flirtation? You wouldn't—you wouldn't marry her, would you?"

"For a fellow who sets up to be clever, you're the blindest bat I ever came across," returned John, scornfully. "Marry her? If I knew that marrying her would cost me my life twenty-four hours later, I'd marry her this minute,—if she'd have me!"

"Nonsense!" said I, parting my hair. "You don't care for women!"

"What business have you to know or say what I care for? You think I don't feel, because I don't chatter!" John's handsome Saxon face was flushed, and his blue eyes were wide open and indignant. His innocence is really pathetic.

"If you are in earnest, of course that alters the case," I said, gravely. "You couldn't expect me to know, until you told me. Perhaps Sinfire doesn't know, either."

"Oh, yes, she knows!" replied he, with a groan,

"Well, modesty is a virtue; but you needn't carry it so far as to imagine that, if you want her, you can't have her for the asking."

"It isn't modesty: it's common sense! What is there in me she should care for? I feel no better than the groom in the stable when I'm with her. I don't know how to talk; and I don't know what sort of things she's interested in."

I said, "However much of a paragon she may be, she is like other women in being supremely interested in a certain subject; and that happens to be one in which you are just now especially proficient."

"What is it?"

"Why, love, to be sure! And love is what you must talk to her. You can do it; and you can't do it too much! Blurt it right out: never mind the words it comes in! It will get to her just the same. And sooner or later it will go hard but she will talk back to you!"

But John shook his head, and sighed. "I might talk love to her, if I wasn't in love with her," he replied, after a moment. "But, as it is, I can't get my mouth open: I can only act like an ass. And that isn't all. I feel as if there were some secret between her and me,—something that she is keeping from me, I mean. I haven't an idea