"Perfect," replied Nansie, for a moment carried away by his earnestness and eloquence; "a heaven upon earth."
"You can form no idea," said Kingsley, with a happy smile, "what delight you give me in agreeing with me upon such subjects. Though I should not say that; it half implies that we might possibly disagree upon our views for the future. When I first saw you I knew you thoroughly. I saw your sweet and beautiful nature in your eyes, and they are the loveliest eyes, my heart, that ever shone kindly upon man. 'Here,' said I to myself--Oh, you have no notion how I thought of you when I was alone! I used to walk up and down my room, speaking to you and listening for your answers; there are silent voices, you know, Nansie--'Here,' said I to myself, 'here is the sweetest and purest spirit that ever was embodied in woman. Here is one whose companionship through life would make earth a heaven'--exactly as you expressed it just now, my love--'and to win whom would be the most precious blessing which could fall to a fellow's lot. I love her, I love her, I love her!'"
"Oh, Kingsley!" murmured Nansie, laying her face on her husband's breast. His sincerity and simple earnestness--whatever the worldly practical value of the words he was uttering--carried her away into his land of dreams, and surely they were words so sweet and loving that no woman could listen to them unmoved.
"And if it be my happiness to win her," continued Kingsley, "I will prove myself worthy of her."
Nansie thought of the sacrifice of wealth and position he had made for her, a sacrifice not grudgingly but cheerfully made, and in the making of which he did not arrogate to himself any undue or unusual merit, and she murmured, as she pressed him fondly to her: "You have proved yourself more than worthy, my dearest dear. It is I, it is I who have to prove myself worthy of you!"
"That is not so," he said, gravely, but still holding the thread of his dreams; "it is the woman who stands upon the higher level; it is the man who must lift himself up to it, if he is a true man. Yes, my darling, even when I first saw you I used to think of you in the way I have described. Why, my dear, your face was ever before me; every little trick of expression with which you are sweetly gifted was repeated a hundred and a hundred times when I was alone and nobody nigh. And let me tell you, dear wife, you exercised an influence for good over me which I cannot well make clear to you. 'Why, Kingsley, old fellow,' the chums used to say, 'we expected you to our supper-party last night, and you never turned up. What has come over you?' I wasn't going to tell them what it was that kept me away. Not likely. The majority of fellows there, living the life we did, wouldn't understand it, and it isn't a thing you can beat into a fellow's head--it must come to a fellow, as it came to me, I'm thankful to say."
"Was there ever a man," thought Nansie, "who could say such sweet things as my Kingsley is saying to me?"
"To return to the caravan," said Kingsley. "I have no doubt you are perfectly familiar by this time, Mrs. Manners, with one of my great failings in conversation--flying off at a tangent upon the smallest provocation; but I always pick up my threads again, that you must admit. So I pick up the thread of the caravan we were discussing. You have put the matter of the piano so forcibly before me--although you are not a logician, my dear, I give you the credit of not being bad in an argument--that it is put quite aside, not to be reintroduced. There is one capital thing about a caravan, there are no taxes to pay, and no rent either. If a fellow could only get rid of butchers' bills now! You see, I know something about housekeeping. Well, but that is a good thing in caravans, isn't it, Nansie--no rent or taxes?"
"Yes, it is," replied Nansie; "but you must not forget, Kingsley, dear, that it is not summer all the year through."
"Forget it! Of course I don't forget it. There are fires, aren't there, Nansie? And don't you forget that I've been very careful in making the caravan water-tight. We should feel like patriarchs--young patriarchs, you know, though I've always looked upon them as old, every man Jack of them. When you say 'in the days of the patriarchs,' it sounds oldish--long white beards, and all that sort of thing."