Page:Maud Howe - Atlanta in the South.djvu/223

 door on his way to the forward deck, where Mrs. Harden was sitting.

"What has happened to you, Philip?" Sara Harden asked as soon as he joined her. He told her what had passed.

She looked at him admiringly, and laid a soft, gemmed hand on his arm.

"Philip, you are a person for an emergency. How excited you look! See, your hand is positively trembling."

"Yes? as long as it was firm while I probed the wound, what does it matter?" He was nettled by what she had said.

"Philip, I don't believe in platonics, and yet I positively love you at this moment,—do you know what I mean?—without being a particle in love with you."

"What is the distinction?"

"When one loves a person, it is a disinterested feeling; when one is in love, one wants the person for one's own. Now I certainly am not in love with you, for I should n't know what to do with you if you were given to me this moment; and yet I am quite certain that I love you as I might love a child,—and yet you are a great deal better and stronger than I am—"

"You are very good to me, dear friend."

"I wish I could be really good to you, but I cannot; you are so quaint and misty and