'Nay,' said he, 'they say that talking of love is making it.'
Plucking a thistle that sprang from the bank, I blew away its down with my balmy breath, merely to hide my confusion.
Surely I am the most sensitive of all created beings!
Betterton had now reached us, out of breath after his race, and utterly unable to articulate.
'Betterton,' cried I, 'what is love?'
''Tis,' said he, gasping, ''tis—'tis——'
'The gentleman,' cried Stuart, 'gives as good a description of it as most of our modern poets; who make its chief ingredients panting and broken murmurs.'
'Now in my opinion,' said I, 'love is a mystical sympathy, which unfolds itself in the glance that seeks the soul,—the sentiment that the soul embodies—the tender gaiety—the more delicious sadness—the stifled sigh—the soft and malicious smile—the thrill, the hope, the fear—each in itself a little bliss. In a word, it is the swoon of the soul, the delirium of the heart, the elegant inebriety of unsophisticated sentiment.'
'If such be love,' said Stuart, 'I fear I shall never bring myself to make it.'
'And pray,' said I, 'how would you make love?'