"I don't think you really want to get married, do you?"
"My dear, I'm absolutely dying to get married."
"Truly?"
"Doris, look at me."
And surely she looked at him with more admiration than he had ever looked at himself in a glass.
"What a time I shall have with mother," she gasped with the gurgling triumphant laugh of a child who has unexpectedly found the way to open the store-cupboard.
"Oh, no, you won't," John prophesied, confidently. "I'm not going to have such an excellent last scene spoilt by unnecessary talk. We'll get married first and tell everybody afterwards. I've lately discovered what an amazing capacity ordinary human nature has for invention. It really frightens me for the future of novelists, who I cannot believe will be wanted much longer. Oh no, Doris, I'm not going to run the risk of hearing any preliminary gossip about our marriage. Neither your mother nor my relations nor the general public are going to have any share in it before or after. In fact to be brief I propose to elope. Notwithstanding my romantic plays I have spent a private life of utter dullness. This is my last opportunity to do anything unusual. Please, my dearest girl, let me experience the joys of an actual elopement before I relapse into eternal humdrummery."
"A horrid description of marriage!" she protested.
"Comparative humdrummery, I should have said, comparative, that is to say, with the excesses attributed to me by rumor. I've often wanted to write a play about Tiberius, and I feel well equipped to do so now. But I'm serious about the elopement. I really do want to avoid my relations' tongues."
"I believe you're afraid of them."