“What is the matter?”
“Suddenly, I think.”
“Can’t you walk and think at the same time?”
He smiled, and came up with her again.
“If I make you a good reason—” he began, and then hesitated and was silent.
They followed the muddy path almost to the Luitpoldbrücke before he continued his phrase.
“If one can change for a good reason, and if I make you a good reason, then will you change about me?”
She drew a quick little breath.
“I can’t change in that way,” she said; “you know that I do not want to marry again: marriage is too awful an undertaking. Don’t you see that even now it does not make you always happy to be around me—”
“I am never around you,” he exclaimed indignantly. “I never have hardly touch you. I have been with you not as a man, but as an angel. Je me comporte comme un ange—comme un ange—c’est moi qui vous le dit! I have given you one kiss such as a small baby might give its mother, and that is all;—and then you say that I am always around you.”