"Ethan, Ethan, what are you saying!" She stopped him as he paced the parlor from Daniel Boone to the mirror. She remembered the evening that her father, in that very room, had "forbidden the banns." "You know I don't let you talk like that of our dear love."
"I only say it to myself, child, as a kind of comfort."
"You need comforting, too?"
He nodded, smiling in his grave way.
"I tell myself it's not my darling that is to blame. We've been almost too happy. The old leveller, Nature, is at her eternal work of rotation, turning the big wheel round. By so much as we've been on the top we must go under for a little."
"Ethan, that may be good science, but it's very poor love."
"It's the best apology I can invent for you."
"For me?" Her voice rang along an indignant circumflex.
"It's certainly not I who was tired."