“Oh,” she said, “I think you talk charmingly.” She had started to say, “you make love charmingly,” but on second thoughts decided that the overt statement had better come from him. “Dear me,” she went on, “we have so much to talk about. There’s my job. Can’t we talk a little about that?”
They could and did. Their talk consisted largely in his telling her how much richer a service she could render his paper through having been unconsciously steeped in beauty than if she had been merely intellectually instructed—than if, as she more simply put it, she had known something. And as he talked, her mind began to expand in the warm atmosphere of his praise and to give off its perfume like a flower.
But the idea of her working with him day after day, helping the development of the paper which had grown as dear as a child to him, was so desirable that he did not dare to contemplate it unless it promised realization.
“Oh,” he broke out, “you won’t really do it. Your family will object, or something. Probably when I go away to-night, I shall never see you again.”
“You are still going away to-night?”
“I must.”
She looked at him and slowly shook her head, as a mother shakes her head at the foolish plans of a child.
“I thought I was going,” he said, weakly.
“Why?”
He groaned, but did not answer.