Page:The Tsar's Window.djvu/196

 incident amused me, and I smiled. George paid no more attention to the havoc he had caused than he did to the snow-storm outside.

"Who told you that?" he cried.

"Hush!" I answered. "No matter who told me."

"And you could believe that of me!" he murmured, with a look of concentrated mortification and sorrow.

"No!" I exclaimed impulsively. "No, no! I don't believe it."

"But you did. Well, it is as false as the heart of the man or woman who told you."

Here he glanced at the prostrate tongs, and concluded to pick them up; and I observed, in a melancholy tone, "There is the poker, too."

"I will go away," he said, grasping the poker absently in his hand, "and you must try to forget all I have said. Good-by" (looking at me wistfully).

I put out my hand; he held it for a moment, then rushed at the door, discovered that he had left his hat, and came back, still clinging to the poker.

What demon of nervousness was it which made me burst out laughing when he laid the poker down on the table and took up his hat! He looked at me with a sort of dull reproach.

"I know I am very ridiculous," he said.

"It is not that," I cried. "It is—I don't know what is the matter with me. I am nervous."

This was not strictly true. Almost every man is somewhat ridiculous when he is making love to a woman who does not care for him; and George,