“I am afraid I’m a heathen,” he said dubiously, “if in this day and age, when the air is blue with reforms, I object to seeing the girl I love wearing her life away for a mere chimera.”
“Herbert Lynn!” exclaimed Elsie impetuously as she drew away from his embrace and looked him earnestly in the face. “Do you look upon the question of the day, the question that occupies all tongues and speaks a heart-rending language in every half-starved wretch that walks the street, as a chimera?”
“It is a phantom that has been chased a good many thousand years,” he answered, “and the end is not yet.”
“Have you no interest in the question?”
“Specifically, yes; generally, no.”
“Then you have no heart!” exclaimed Elsie warmly.
“I confess that it has left me and is in the keeping of a fierce little radical.”
“Who wishes your judgment was with it, for I think such conservatism as yours is dangerous and—yes, positively wicked!”
“You are charming when you wear that look,” said Herbert critically.
“Just wait till I find you are as obstinate as you are evasive, and I shall not look so charming. But really I wish you would go away. Do you see that pile of blue jeans? Every moment wasted on you is just so much stolen from my beauty sleep, and of course you care more for that than for any purpose of mine.”