"But, Ernest," I said, "you used to satisfy me. Oh, how happy I was in those first days when we were always together; and you seemed so fond me!" I was down on the floor by this time, and looking up into his pale, anxious face.
"Dear child," he said, "I do love you, and that more than you know. But you would not have me leave my work and spend my whole time telling you so?"
"You know I am not so silly," I cried.. "It is not fair, it is not right to talk as if I were. I ask for nothing unreasonable. I only want those little daily assurances of your affection which I should suppose would be spontaneous if you felt at all towards me as I do to you."
"The fact is," he returned, "I am absorbed in my work. It brings many grave cares and anxieties. I spend most of my time amid scenes of suffering and at dying beds. This makes me seem abstracted and cold, but it does not make you less dear. On the contrary, the sense it gives me of the brevity and sorrowfulness of life makes you doubly precious, since it constantly reminds me that sick beds and dying beds must sooner or later come to our home as to those of others."
I clung to him as he uttered these terrible words. In an agony of terror.
"Oh, Ernest, promise me, promise me that you will not die first," I pleaded.
"Foolish little thing!" he said, and was as silly, for a while, as the silliest heart could ask. Then he became serious again.
"Katy," he said, "if you can once make up your mind to the fact that I am an undemonstrative man, not all fire and fury and ecstasy as you are, yet loving you with all my heart, however it may seem, I think you will spare yourself much needless pain—and spare me, also."
"But I want, you to be demonstrative," I persisted.
"Then you must teach me. And about my father and sister, perhaps, we may find some way of relieving you by and by. Meanwhile, try to bear with the trouble they make, for my sake."