"So you're positive she means to marry him?"
"She swears she doesn't—that it's only fun, you know. But in my heart I believe it is as good as settled between them."
"Well, if she's made up her mind to it, I don't, for the life of me, see how you're going to stop her," returned Ordway, smiling.
"But a year ago she'd made up her mind to marry me," groaned Banks.
"If she's as variable as that, my dear boy, perhaps the wind will blow her heart back to you again."
"I don't believe she's got one," rejoined Banks, with the merciless dissection of the pure passion; "I sometimes think that she hasn't any more heart than—than—I don't know what."
"In that case I'd drag myself together and let her alone. I'd go back to my work and resolve never to give her another thought."
"Then," replied Banks, "you might have all the good sense that there is in the business, but you wouldn't be in love. Now I love her for what she is, and I don't want her changed even if it would make her kinder. When she used to be sweet I thought sweetness the most fascinating thing on earth, and now that she bangs me, I've come to think that banging is."
"I begin to understand," remarked Ordway, laughing, "why you are not what might be called a successful lover."
"It isn't because I don't know the way," returned Banks gloomily, "it's because I can't practice it even after I've planned it out. Don't I lie awake at night making up all sorts of speeches I'm going to say to her in the morning? Oh, I can be indifferent enough when I'm dressing before the mirror—I've even put on a purple cravat because she hated it, but I've always taken it off again before I went downstairs to breakfast. Then as soon as I lay my eyes upon her, I feel my heart begin to swell as if it would burst out of my waistcoat, and instead of the flippant speeches I've planned, I crawl and whimper just as I did the day before."