"I used to write poems about your eyes and your lips which I thought the most alluring in the world. Did I dream I should ever see and kiss them in reality?"
Silence again for a further interval of rapture.
"Now you will know how I have been feeling about going out to India! How is it possible for me to leave you behind? Can't we be married in a week?"
"We could," said Kitty, "but you forget there are others who will have something to say to that."
"Your parents?"
"Undoubtedly. One daughter in India is enough for Mother. I am not at all sure she will consent." It was very mischievous of her to distress him for the sake of delighting in the proofs of his abject slavery to herself, but Kitty was nothing if not human, and realising the completeness of her own surrender, was pleased to get back a little of her own.
His woe-begone look was almost melodramatic. "If they refuse their consent, what will you do?"
"I suppose I shall have to obey. I'm not of age, you know," said Kitty knowing full well that she was bound to have her own way, her parents having long ago resigned themselves to her strength of character and determination.
"Then I'll desert and enlist under another name that I might be killed by a German bullet," he said gloomily.
"But you mightn't be killed. You might just be smashed up instead, invalided out without a limb, or, worse still, be made unrecognisable!"