“What does she mean?” thought he, in all the flurry of his excited feelings. “Is she merely playing me off to make use of me, or am I to believe that she really will—after all? Though I confess to thirty-eight—I am actually no more than forty-two—only a little bald and gray in the whiskers, and—confound it, she guesses what is passing through my head.—What are you laughing at; do, I beg of you, tell me truly what it is?” cried he, aloud.
“I was thinking of an absurd analogy, Mr. Stocmar; some African traveller—I'm not sure that it is not Mungo Park—mentions that he used to estimate the depth of the rivers by throwing stones into them, and watching the time it took for the air bubbles to come up to the surface. Now, I was just fancying what a measure of human motives might be fashioned out of the interval of silence which intervenes between some new impression and the acknowledgment of it. You were gravely and seriously asking yourself, 'Am I in love with this woman?'”
“I was,” said he, solemnly.
“I knew it,” said she, laughing. “I knew it.”
“And what was the answer—do you know that too?” asked he, almost sternly.
“Yes, the answer was somewhat in this shape: 'I don't half trust her!'”
They both laughed very joyously after this, Stocmar breaking out into a second laugh after he had finished.
“Oh! Mr. Stocmar,” cried she, suddenly, and with an impetuosity that seemed beyond her control, “I have no need of a declaration on your part. I can read what passes in your heart by what I feel in my own. We have each of us seen that much of life to make us afraid of rash ventures. We want better security for our investments in affection than we used to do once on a time, not alone because we have seen so many failures, but that our disposable capital is less. Come now, be frank, and tell me one thing,—not that I have a doubt about it, but that I 'd like to hear it from yourself,—confess honestly, you know who I am and all about me?”
So sudden and so unexpected was this bold speech, that Stocmar, well versed as he was in situations of difficulty, felt actually overcome with confusion; he tried to say something, but could only make an indistinct muttering, and was silent.
“It required no skill on my part to see it,” continued she. “Men so well acquainted with life as you, such consummate tacticians in the world's strategies, only make one blunder, but you all of you make that: you always exhibit in some nameless little trait of manner a sense of ascendancy over the woman you deem in your power. You can't help it. It's not through tyranny, it's not through insolence,—it is just the man-nature in you, that's all.”