How little he must know about love, I thought, to ask such a question.
"Wonderful?" I said, looking away from him across to the sunset. In the radiance of the level rays a swarm of tiny insects spun enraptured—each thinking, possibly, that the sun had risen and shone only for him and his little winged love, creatures of a day.
"One five minutes of that," I said, as much to myself as to him, "is worth having lived for twenty stodgy years without it. Even if you lose it again it would have been worth it!"
"You think so?"
"Yes! And I do hope that it will happen like that for you," I told him. "I don't mean the losing it again part. I do hope that you will get everything that you want."
"Yes, so do I," said Captain Holiday, in that rather disconcerting way of his. "But, look here—you seem to be able to tell one so much—supposing it were neither of those two things that you suggest that kept the girl from answering, as I want her to? What about that?"
"Couldn't you," I suggested, "ask her again some time?"
He fingered his small, obstinately-growing moustache.
"That's an idea. Yes. Well! Thanks very much. I'll think about what you've said, Joan."
Joan——!