"No. It's only you. Till I found you I was just an angry ball of mud."
"But—"
"A thirsty man in a stuffy room."
"But—"
"An emptiness, a wailing blank, an eviscerated thing."
"A what?" asked Ingeborg, who had not heard that word before.
"And you," he went on, "are the cool water that quenches me, the scent of roses come into the room, liquid light to my clay."
She drew a deep breath. "It's wonderful, wonderful," she said. "And it sounds so real somehow—really almost as though you meant it. Oh, I don't mind you making fun of me a bit if only you'll go on saying lovely things like that."
"Fun of you? Have you no idea, then, positively no idea, how sweet you are?"
He bent down and looked into her face. "With little kisses in each of your eyes," he said, scrutinizing them.