“Oh, Alick, you did not use to say so!”
“Perhaps I thought so, though! It’s an infernal nuisance to be loved so, I tell you, and I’m tired of it!”
“Alick, Alick, you used to make me tell you over and over again how much I loved you. You used to say I couldn’t love you too much, I couldn’t even love you enough,” she murmured, dropping her pleading hands upon her lap.
“Bosh! I must have been a great spoon in those days!”
She did not reply to this, but again covered her face and wept softly.
“Besides,” continued this moral philosopher, “such love as yours is—what do they call it in the prayer-books?—‘inordinate affection.’ And inordinate affection is very sinful, let me tell you, and will bring its own punishment. Sooner or later you will suffer for it.”
“Oh, I have, I have suffered for it, have I not?”
This wail came from her unawares, and the next moment she was sorry for having let it escape her, sorry for the feeling that prompted it; for she could not bear even in her thoughts to blame one whom she worshipped so madly.
“Well, if you have suffered, it is your own fault.”
“I know it, Alick—I know it; and I never meant to say that it was yours.”