Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/230

 "You don't love me," she cried again, with increasing vehemence. "You don't love me! You love somebody else! You haven't any right to talk to me like that. You thought I meant that odious valentine. I didn't mean it. Nobody meant it. It was nothing at all."

"Hattie," he cried, with a sudden access of anger, which was not altogether unbecoming; "Hattie, you shall not talk to me like that. You shall listen tome. You shall believe what I say! I do love you—I love you with all my heart. I loved you the first time I ever saw you—I have thought of you from morning till night every day of my life since that day. I love you always—I love you when I am with you, and I love you when you are absent. I love you when you are sweet and kind, and I love you when you are—not sweet and kind. I love all your looks, and all your words—I would dare swear that I love all the thoughts you think!"

On and on they tramped, through the rain and the mud, and on and on he talked. He, who usually "arranged his sentences so beautifully," could not seem to talk fast enough, to say what he had to say. She did not hear half his words. They were drowned and confused by the wind and the rain, by her own bewildering emotions. Only one terrible, overwhelming fact was borne in upon her guilty little soul. He did love her, and she could not help herself.

At last they got to her own gate, and, with his