"You are quite wild this morning," Cherry said, with the feeling that detachments were coming up faster than she could manage them.
"Men are apt to be, when they are waiting to be shot and the guns don't go off."
"But how do I hinder your having a talk?"
"It takes two to make a bargain, doesn't it? Oh, yes, I can talk on by myself, Saturdays and Sundays, and all the week, and tell the truth straight through. How lovely Cherry looks this morning! The first night I came back I found she had grown handsomer than I ever thought any woman could be, and I think so still. And there's not a girl in all the world that is half so good. And I never cared two straws for anybody else—and never shall. Never could, for that matter. And I've been a fool, and a poltroon, and anything else you like; and so she has thrown me off, and has no use for me any more. And it makes me just mad to sit here and think that I have lost her. And some day I shall get her wedding cards, with the name of some nice man who never tied his shoestrings in a hurry."
"Magnus, why, Magnus!" Cherry said, astonishment sending every other feeling to the rear. "What is the matter with you?"
"That."
"What has come over you?"
"This."
"But we cannot have our talk on such terms," said Cherry, catching her breath a little.
"They're the only terms we shall ever talk on again," said Magnus. "We always chose each other out, from the time we could walk; and I knew I loved you with all my heart when I went away. But the minute I saw you again, that first night, I knew that I never should—never could—love anybody else. Not if I lived to be nine hundred and ninety-nine, and you got in love with forty other men."