Page:The Relentless City.djvu/215

Rh His last words to Amelie made the girl's cheek glow and her eye brighten. She loved her lover's lack of effusiveness, for to her it indicated the depth of still waters. In everything she found him as she would have him, and when he said she felt that no torrent of words, no battery of impassioned looks, could have been so convincingly genuine as the dry simplicity of his words. Like every other woman or man who has ever loved, she had imagined for herself the ideal lover, and enshrined it in some human tabernacle. To her Bertie was the one and only tabernacle wherein her love could dwell. He had told her with a limpid directness in the early days of their engagement that when he came a-wooing he had come, of set purpose, to a wealthy house, and this declaration, which would in a nature less sweet and generous than hers have prompted, in case of a lover's quarrel, the stifled whisper had not the most shadowy existence in her. She knew otherwise; the fortunate accident of her wealth had been no more, so she believed, than the mere master of the ceremonies who had introduced them.

The completeness of his reply so satisfied her that, after a short pause, she spoke at once of other things.

she said.

said Bertie.

She sighed.

she said.