"But, my dear girl, the things that please you please me."
"Oh! no, they don't; you deceive yourself if you think they do. Though less clever than I was before I fell in love, I am still a clever woman, and I know that if I said to you all I want to say I should bore you to death."
"Try me, that's all!" was Paul's terse rejoinder.
"For instance, if I followed my own impulses, I should ask you every hour if you loved me as much as you did the hour before."
"That would be a foolish question; you know I do."
"Then," continued Isabel, "I should ask you if you liked me as well as other people and things, all of which I should mention separately, till the list was as long and exhaustive as the Benedicite."
"That also would be a foolish question; you know I love you more than everything and everybody else put together."
"You see I was right," cried Isabel triumphantly; "my normal conversation, if I gave the rein to it, would bore you."
"No, it wouldn't; you couldn't bore me if you tried; but I own I should consider it somewhat unnecessary."
"I don't believe a man ever could really understand a woman," said Isabel rather sadly.